


Bright Precious Things

by shadow_in_the_shade



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BDSM, Dating AU!, Dom/sub, F/M, Fluff, Humiliation kink, M/M, Organized Crime, Orgasm Denial, Prostitution, Prostitution negativity, Relationship Negotiation, Sex Trafficking, Stockholm Syndrome (background), Sub!Athos, Under-age prostitution, Whore phobia, dom!Milady, prostitution positivity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-09-17 07:58:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 17
Words: 46,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9312551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_in_the_shade/pseuds/shadow_in_the_shade
Summary: Milathos, Modern AU. Milady is working as a Dungeon Mistress at the nightclub "Cardinal Sins". One night Athos goes to the club under duress but continues to go every week after his first encounter with Milady de Winter. Six months later and still desperate to know her real name he runs into her in the local store, but can he ever reconcile Anne with Milady and himself to what she does for a living? Cue every dating cliche ever seen in fanfic combined with prostitution and bdsm negotiation!Primarily a Milathos story but with side - ships of Portamis and Constagnan."All the bright precious things fade away and they don't come back" .....or do they?





	1. Chapter 1

**Bright Precious Things**

 

**1.**

“You’re pathetic,” she says, and it should not do to him what it does, but it does and he is lost and he is exactly where he should be all at once. His gaze is fixed where it must fall, to the toe of her boot, and he wants to kiss it, but she has not yet said that he may; and she is right, he _is_ pathetic. He should not shiver the way he shivers to hear it but he loves it and wants to hear more. She knows he does.

“Worthless, disgusting thing,” she offers, her voice is warm and golden and cutting all at once; her voice is a curl of butter at the edge of a blade. He can almost taste her voice, knows exactly the way her lip will be curling, the way she will be looking at him, but he does not dare look up to see. He has thought about kissing those lips. He would never dare say that out loud. His head reels from her, drunk with the scent of jasmine and leather.

“Aren’t you?” Even sneering, her voice works on him like a caress, sliding down his skin and clenching in his chest.

“Yes, Milady,” he is ashamed of how quickly the words come out. Shame does not seem to make him any less hard around her.

 _Milady –_ it falls from his tongue like pearls, an enchantment, but sometimes he cannot help but feel the oddity of not knowing her real name. He has felt closer to her than any woman in years – he does not like to admit to the _ever_ that tries to creep in around the side of his mind, and he should not. Six months now of what he cannot help but see as at least some kind of intimacy, however different he is sure it must seem to her – and he does not even know her name. Nor, when he thinks about it – and he thinks about it in truth far more than he would like – does he know anything about her; nothing that exists outside of this room with its flagstone floor and instruments of her trade adorning the walls. Everything in here is heavy and rich, drapes around a bed that he suspects is more for show than anything else, puddling purple on the floor, everything carved from dark wood and smelling faintly of trees and polish. And her, what he can tell of her – those beautiful eyes that captured him from the first but that give him nothing, her hair piled intricately on top of her head; how it kills him when it falls loose just a little and he would die sometimes to push it behind her ear and try and make her smile. She never smiles for happiness. It is not in her persona. The shape of her cuts a figure through his dreams, leather and velvet lacing her in and her skirts falling longer at the back like the tail of a peacock sweeping the floor. He has stared often enough at the hem of her skirt, shorter at the front so he can see her boots, shiny and somehow dangerous, laced all the way to the knee; she is laced in so tightly he wonders that she breathes. She has only ever touched him with her gloves on but he has dared, when he can look that high, to dream of her skin, her pale throat and the swell of her breasts, all he can see of it, pale and almost translucent and he thinks if he could just touch once he might die. She is almost mythological in his eyes.

This is all he has, and it is enough to keep coming back, enough to keep paying what she charges; but he cannot eke out anything more than this, not for all of his attempts. He does not, she says, pay her nearly enough to get an insight into her life beyond the club, and it seems that offering to do so is the only level to which he will not lower himself. The _girlfriend experience,_ she says, is not a thing she offers, and to try Lady Artemisia down the hall if that’s what he wants. It is not what he wants. The idea of going to any other girl repels him; _this_ should have repelled him. But she does not. She never could.

He remembers how it started, of course, he is not sure that he could ever forget or would really want to if he could. It had started with Aramis, one dull afternoon in work asking if he knew _Cardinal Sins._

_“What’s that?” Athos swivelled his chair around, rubbing his head where the scrunched up ball of paper had hit him. Aramis was slouched back in his chair, yawning, with his feet up on the desk._

_“I said do you know Cardinal Sins?” Aramis rolled his eyes at Athos for the tenth time that day._

_“You’re the one with the Master’s degree in Theology,” Athos grumbled – “You tell me.”_

_“No you prat, the club – Cardinal Sins on Regent Street. God, anyone would think you’re only here to work.”_

_“Which would be strange,” Athos deadpanned back – “You know. In the workplace, as we are. Don’t you have a report to write?”_

_“And I am on that,” Aramis yawned loudly – “Any minute now. And you, my friend, are coming out tonight with Porthos and myself now, whether you like it or not. You need to get some fun in your life fast.”_

_“But I – I really don’t – club.” Athos mumbled._

_“And you’d know that how, given it’s been what – ten years since you last tried?” d’Artagnan chipped in._

_“Oh I’m sorry; I didn’t know I had to take an Aramis level of crap from the rookie now.”_

_“Yeah,” Aramis grinned, turning around to smile at d’Artagnan and throw another paper missile his way – “Shut it, rookie.”_

_“I’ll make you a deal.” Athos kept staunchly at his paperwork the whole time they were talking – “You clean your paper balls up – don’t snicker just because I said “balls” – finish your reports – you, d’Artagnan, follow my example, not this renegade’s; and then I will come out to this club of yours tonight – though I won’t like it and you’ll wish I hadn’t.”_

_“Well that’s a dubious bargain at best,” Aramis grumbled, slowly, very slowly, taking his feet off the desk._

“ _What’s that-” Porthos sauntered in – “he actually coming?”_

_“You owe me a fiver,” Aramis nodded, greeting him with a fist bump._

_“You had a bet on me?” Athos groaned – “I hate you all.”_

_“Ah, you’ll love it.”_

_“I can almost promise you I won’t.”_

_Porthos made a dismissive scoffing noise – “Trust us,” he grinned – “It’s not that kind of club.” Athos opened his mouth to question this before deciding he did not care –_

_“Just get back to work, all of you. Try and remember this is an office. A headquarters no less – for adults –” he shrugged and let himself smile a little – “And d’Artagnan,” he amended._

_They were right, he thought, looking around the club as he entered somewhat nervously that night – looking for a means of escape more than anything. Whatever he had been expecting – and he had not been entirely sure – Cardinal Sins was not it. It was like coming on board an alien space ship – dark and glowing in the depths, flickering lights and shining wires running thick across the ceiling like the underbellies of a nest of snakes. He had never seen so much plastic and chrome, leather and lace in all his life. The dance floor was wreathed in smoke glowing green and red like poison in the lights and the people barely looked like people at all, snakes and birds and exotic fish, swimming in the half light, scale and tooth and claw. He looked down at his shirt and felt like an idiot. There were what looked like cages suspended from the ceiling with dancers inside who made him want to blush. He turned to Aramis and wished he hadn’t. He wanted to ask him what the point of a shirt so sheer it was see- through was but it felt like too much effort to make himself be heard over the music, toxic and thrumming and pervasive. He stuck instead to only what seemed necessary –_

_“Is this place –” he yelled – “Even legal?”_

_“It’s BDSM, Athos,” Aramis yelled back, bouncing lightly on his feet to the music – “Not a den of iniquity, all legal and above board.”_

_“And them?” Athos gestured to the dancers and the girls hovering on the edges of the bar – “Are they legal and above board?”_

_“Technically – ” Aramis grinned, his teeth startlingly white in the strange light – “The mistresses are employed as exotic dancers. Any other transactions are conducted on a strictly one to one basis – except the dungeon hire which is paid for through the club. Technically it’s all entirely legal.”_

_“Mistresses,” Athos echoed, raising an eyebrow – “Dungeon hire? Fuck my entire life, Aramis”_

_“Athos chill,” Aramis beamed as Porthos started to pull him away by the collar – “There’s the bar. Have a drink.”_

_“Well thank god,” Athos sighed heavily – “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day.”_

_He felt like an invader in this strangely lit, somehow subterranean realm, as though any moment now people would start shouting at him for being so blatantly out of place and make him leave at the very least. He could not have felt more exposed if he had been stripped naked and hung from one of the cages, the only man in the place in blue jeans, the only man so completely out of time with the music. He sat down on a bar stool as far in the corner as he could find and ordered double whiskeys, thankful that it was Friday night._

_He was on his third when she slipped into the seat beside him, like a wind, light and cool in this hot place that smelled like sweat and lust. She smelled like air, sticky sweet with something floral and musky that made his head spin with more than the drink, prickling the back of his neck. He could not explain then or afterwards why the feeling like a punch in his gut, everything draining from him when he caught her eyes. Every new thought was more ridiculous, a chain of confusion and certainty leading up to the preposterous urge to ask her how he knew her._

_“Hello,” she said simply, her eyes glittering, smiling, her lips flickering like the lights, magical and poisonous._

_“Stay,” he said, his voice thick and hoarse and he blinked and tried to clear his head and realised with a shock that if she did not all the air might flood back into him so hard it would slam him to the ground. Then he realised what he had said, and shock his head –_

_“Wait no – sorry – I mean – hello,” he nodded, obscurely proud of himself for finding the right word. She smiled, though he could not read it, but he did not care, he had never felt more helpless or cared less about the fact._

_“First time?” she arched an eyebrow._

_“Is it that obvious_?”

_She laughed, it was a beautiful noise; entirely fake he knew, but beautiful like glasses chinking together, crystal on crystal._

_“Last time then?” her voice curled around him like silver smoke, pulling him in and he wanted to say yes, up until a second ago he would have meant it completely but he heard himself saying –_

_“No,” unable to look away from her – “No. I don’t think so.”_

_She smiles, she almost fools him into thinking she is genuinely happy –_

_“Good,” she says and now her voice is like chocolate filling his mouth; he can almost taste it. He opens his mouth to ask her if she comes here often, but stops himself just in time. He knows what she is, what she does. He knows what he is to her and does not care._

_“Would you like –” she says and god he can almost taste her voice, honey and spices and wine, and he is nodding before she has finished even though he has no idea the extent of her offer but he lets her lead him from the bar. Her hand is soft in black velvet and he wonders how much softer her skin would be. He has never wanted so hard and so fast in his life, or so thoughtlessly. He follows her, noticing how people step aside for her as though she were a queen and he stumbles behind, trying not to step on the sweep of her dress. He wonders how he comes to be so quickly on his knees before her but it feels as though he falls there after a wait of his entire life and he pays what she asks in advance and does not question it even though he knows somewhere in the lost logical part of his brain that she is fleecing him completely and that he might have argued this; and he does not care, it is worth it._

He still wonders now, and has wondered every time since – _dear god how did I come to be here?_ And the story the events leading up to that first time – none of it feels an adequate answer but he knows that his mouth goes dry thinking of her and his heart starts to hammer every Friday morning thinking about that night. He knows that thinks of her every time his mind wanders and that he has dreamed of her, the most ridiculous impossible dreams. He suspects that he is unutterably ridiculous and is almost certain she knows this even better than he does. 

“Look at me,” she says and it is the best command she ever gives him and the tip of her cane strokes the side of his face and he wonders what she does with it for other customers but for him all she ever needs to is hold it while she speaks, using just the end as a stick to torment him with. He looks up, ready to drink her in, unspeakably grateful to be allowed the honour, cock rock hard and leaking from nothing more than her words, her voice and the caress of her cane. Looking up at her like this affords him all of the skin he ever sees and he drinks her in, only able to dream of touching her. He wonders if she lets others do that, if she gives him less than others because he does not demand it but always lets her lead. Somehow, ridiculously, the thought of her having other customers disgusts him, though he knows he has no right to the disgust. He wonders what she sees in the eyes he gives her and cannot read anything in hers.

“You can take your cock out,” she says and he shudders; he thinks he can see faint amusement flicker around her lips and he wishes he knew what she was thinking. He moves too fast he is sure, with a –

“Yes Milady, thank you,” that tumbles out of him like a prayer and he is so hard and she has left him like this for the most part of an hour now, tormenting him and him loving every second, desperate to come for her but desperate to extend his own agony. She never even touches him harshly with the cane or uses any of the tools at her disposal upon him. She needs nothing but her voice, her smile, the starlight in her eyes shivering silvery on his skin. He thinks sometimes there is nothing he could not do to her or let her do to him and it makes him shake how dangerous the thought feels, and he knows too that all he will take in the end is what she gives him and he will pay whatever she asks for those scraps.

“How long have you been like that?” she asks, eyeing his aching cock with a curl of the lip.

“I – like –” he stammers, face hot, all the harder for shame.

“Oh dear, lost your words? You’ll find them in the same place as your right to come. I don’t have to let you, do I?”

He mumbles something inarticulate and looks down.

“Do I?” she taps the cane beneath his chin, forcing him to look back at her and she dazzles him and he is unworthy and all he can think about is tearing the choker from her throat and feasting on the soft pale skin of her throat and there is a demon in him that could do it and more and he keeps it down, forces it down by letting her force him into submission.

“No, Milady,” forces himself not to close his eyes, almost crying with need – “Since the hour began, Milady.”

“That’s better,” she purrs – “Good boy.” He whimpers. She knows what those two words do to him of course, and she smirks to see him struggle not to just come in delight at the sound. He knows the next part but it does not affect him any less to hear her say it all the same –

“Beg me,” she says – “use all your words and beg me. Beg me to let you come.”

He pauses and even that brief pause is too much to stand, he is crying, tears leaking from him as the desperate wretched pleas fall out, and she smiles to hear him and calls him what he is all over again – _wretched, desperate, worthless, pathetic dog – Good._ And on the final word the tip of her cane nudges against his cock and the slight friction is all he needs and he comes messily into his hands, his whole body shuddering with it. He babbles his thank you’s before she ever needs to ask. When the shaking is over, he feels lighter than he has done all week, better perhaps, at a most amazing kind of peace. He looks up and wishes he can read her eyes. She reaches out a gloved hand to help him to his feet. This one touch of her hand feels like caring, like a kiss, the closest he will get to holding her and talking with her. He always tries to make it last. He stands and fastens himself up and is always torn struggling between meeting her eyes and drinking her in and the shame that makes him want to look away. He always settles for looking at her while he can, paying for every moment.

He is unwilling to leave; he has been these past two months, he hovers on the threshold and asks her the same question he has been asking all this time –

“Tell me your name.” It sounds more like a plea every time.

“You know I won’t,” she says, like every time.

“Please,” he says; he has not said please before. For a moment she looks as though she will push him out the door. She bites her lip and for the first time she looks down, tapping the cane against her skirts –

“And if I did?” she says – he stares at the way her teeth nibble her lip – it is the most human thing he has ever seen her do. He feels as though he is falling through a tunnel and she is at the end of it – “Why would you think for a moment I would not simply make one up?”

“I could –” he begins.

“Pay me?” she gives a short bark of a laugh – “Then I’d tell you a new one every week and take your money for it and call you a fool” She presses her lips together tight and he wonders what it is she is holding in so hard. He cannot miss the way her chest heaves. When she looks back at him he could swear he catches a hint of sadness in her eyes like a ghost in a mirror –

“Don’t fall in love with me Athos,” she shakes her head, his heart hitches to hear her say his name, he told her months ago but she has never used it until now – “It would be pointless”. Her lips pull with something like regret and he finds himself overcome by a wish that he could make her happy. He musters up all his courage but it only comes out as far as –

“I want –” before she stops him –

“Don’t,” she says – “Goodnight Athos.”

This time she does close the door on him and he has no idea why, in the face of this, he finds himself walking on air as he leaves, his head higher in the clouds after this than he has ever been.

__x__


	2. Chapter 2

 

**2.**

He does not come down for the next few days; he is borne aloft floating with his head in the clouds. He does not even want to begin asking himself why. He has dreams that leave him waking hot and guilty and confused, over and over again, spinning his head in a whirlwind of want. He hears her say his name over and over again like a song that will not keep playing in his head, sometimes pausing too long before he realises that the repeated “Athos!” is coming from Aramis or one of the others as they try to get his attention throughout the day, pulling himself from this dreamy new world and back into the one where he is supposed to reside.

Soon enough they start teasing the he is in love. He does not even feel as though he is lying when he says no and so it confuses him that he feels himself growing hot at the question, wonders if his laugh of dismissal is a little uneasy. One morning Porthos gets him alone in the car, stationed on a corner in the early morning, and asks him gently if it is not perhaps genuinely the case. Again he says no.

“Why do you ask?”

“Well,” Porthos looks at him sideways – “Because you’re staring into that coffee cup as though it knows the answers and you keep going to take a drink even though it’s been empty half an hour now.”

“I’m fine,” he grunts.

“Athos –” Porthos begins gently.

“What?”

“It’s not that woman is it?”

“What woman?” this time he does feel guiltily as though he might be lying.

“From the club. You still go every week don’t you?”

He does not reply.

“It’s no issue man,” Porthos shrugs – “You know Aramis and I go all the time – it’s no big deal unless –”

“Unless what?”

Porthos makes a face and a noise that signifies he has no idea at all of how to word what he would like to say –

“Athos, I know you –” he says eventually – “You can’t fall for a girl like that, it would be –”

“Pointless?” Athos cannot stop himself. He raises an eyebrow, fighting back the urge to say _funny, that’s almost what she said._

“It’s not like that,” he says in the end – “Because that would be ridiculous.”

He says it in the same by-rote voice he uses when lying to Treville. Porthos looks at him steadily for a while and when nothing more is forthcoming, he turns away with a sigh, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel until Athos points out the car they have been looking out for rounding the corner.

“Thank god,” he sighs deeply – “Bad guys”.

It turns into a long day and an ultimately unsatisfying one. It is already getting dark when he leaves work and he is tired when he goes into the Co-Op on the way home for food. He moves around the store mechanically, filling his basket with coffee and ready meals, and is not looking where he is going when he walks right into the back of the lady in the queue in front of him who curses, a quick unchecked “Fuck!” as the jolt makes her drop the groceries balanced precariously in her arms, sending them rolling across the shop floor.

“I’m sorry – I’m so sorry –” he babbles it instantly, bending down to pick things up for her. He is pushing a single apple into her outstretched hand when he dares to look up and catch her eye, and he stops and stares, his hands and face grown numb.

“Damn,” she says softly, her gaze sliding away from his, but he cannot stop staring. He has imagined her like this so many times it is almost unreal to finally see her, struggling with two armfuls of foodstuffs, just a girl, a little younger than him, her green eyes bright and darting and nervous, her hair tied simply and tumbling in a messy fall down her back. It is really her, he has to tell himself three times, soft cotton and blue jeans and a crooked twist to her lips that he has thought too many times about kissing.

“It’s you,” he says stupidly and she seems to compose herself at that, rolling her eyes and turning to the checkout where he realises she is next in line and only after that – that he is still holding the apple he has placed in her hand, his thumb brushing her little finger and her little finger brushing his thumb. He has never seen her hands without gloves before, never felt her skin. Her hands are so small under his. He cannot tell if this feels like falling or like flying.

“Are you going to give me that?” she sounds half impatient, half amused, her eyebrow raised and the corner of her lip turned up, and for the first time he hears Milady de Winter in her voice, sees Milady in the arch of her eyebrow and he cannot fathom it. He opens his mouth to say it again _who are you?_ But she snatches the apple from his hand and turns to the checkout impatiently. He can see a flush of pink at the back of her neck, some loose hairs trickling over the neck of her shirt. Suddenly he can smell that same faint perfume he has smelled before, musk and flowers and the urge to touch her, to bury his face in her hair – so terribly close – it is almost impossible.

“Wait,” he says as she moves to pack her things, staring at her hands, at the flare of her nostrils, the narrow look in her eyes. He does not want to frighten her but he cannot bear for her to leave – “Please –” he adds. He does not know what he wants to say. He wants to ask her everything and anything – does she live near here? Why is she buying three single but individual fruits? Why didn’t she take a basket? Are all of those snacks for her or does she live with someone else? He cannot ask that. Does she come here often? Jesus no, or that. What’s the rice for? And the ingredients that she rapidly stuffs into the bag after it? What does she do when she’s not at work? What, above all things, is her name? He knows he cannot, he cannot ask any of it. For the briefest moment she meets his eye and for a moment briefer still he sees something almost apologetic in her face but then she picks up her bags and walks away quickly and he is stuck. He knows he has to pay for items and bag them and that by the time he has she will be gone, but he hurries through the process as fast as he can all the same, running to the door when he is done and looking out into the street but she has already gone. He slumps defeated and trudges towards home.

A few metres from the door to his building he stops dead. This time he recognises her just from the back of her head; she is haloed by a street lamp, rain drops beading her hair like a network of tiny crystals. She is bent over, engaged in what looks like a battle with his own front door. He approaches cautiously, utterly unsure of what to do; even so she whips round when he is less than a metre away, his foot on the first of the three steps leading up to the door, her key pointed at him, held like a weapon between her fingers.

“What do you want?” she snaps. She makes him think of a cat trapped between a high wall and an angry dog. She looks at him twice and blinks – “Oh it’s you –” she appears to think about it, almost to lower her hand before she clenches her fist around the key again tightly. “What do you want? Why are you following me? What are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” he blinks, staring from her to the improvised weapon to her again – “What do you want? This is _my_ front door.”

“No –oo,” she says slowly – “This is my front door. Or it would be if I could get the damn thing open.”

He blinks slowly, staring at her, just as he had not been able to help himself doing in the shop. Even as understanding dawns on him it does not seem quite real –

“You live here,” he states stupidly. “You’re the new tenant in Flat four. Why are you still pointing that thing at me?”

She stares at the key in her fist and drops her arm slowly, as though only just realising she has been holding it out as though she had been eyeing him down the barrel of a gun. She frowns for a moment before giving a little sigh –

“Reflex,” she says – “habit. What you will.”

“It’s alright,” he takes a step up towards her, stopping just one step below her; from this point his face is almost but not quite on a level with hers. He feels suddenly and acutely the need to continue to give her a slight vantage, to in no way pose the threat she seems to think he is – “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says – “I swear.”

She looks at him as though she does not believe him but her shoulders soften visibly into almost a shrug.

“You live here,” she exhales deeply, rolling her neck to look upwards. Her face shines in the rain, droplets caught in her eyelashes. He wishes he did not notice. “That’s – that’s just – perfect”.

He feels as though he should say sorry for this but forces himself not to. `

“Can I – help?” he tries, cautiously – “You seem to be struggling with the door.”

She glares at him for a moment and neither agrees nor objects.

“Well –” he moves awkwardly around her to get to the keypad, she does not help, but moves enough out of his way at the same time. Even so he is aware of her head close to his, watching him key in the code – “Did you remember the number right? One – four – nine – nine – four - one?”

“Yes,” she snaps, as though this is more important than it should be – “of course I got the number right”.

“Did you reset it? A lot of the time people put in an extra number – or there’s strangers try to break in and then when you come to put the number in it doesn’t work.”

She does not reply and  he says nothing as she watches him reset and try again, holding the door for her when it opens. She side – eyes him as she picks up her bags and goes in, as though he has insulted rather than assisted her, more mortified he feels, than she should be at simply needing assistance with a new door. For a moment it seems as though she will carry on up the stairs without another glance at him, but she stops on the first step, looking back at him as he closes the door. She is once again, he realises, a step above him. She bites her lip once slowly as though wanting to say more than she will allow herself; to apologise perhaps for threatening and then cold shouldering him.

“I’ve – had a lot of different door codes,” she says instead, half defensive, half apologetic.

“It’s not a problem.” He takes a step towards her, this time she has room to back away but she does not move. Neither does she remove her eyes from him for a second.

“I don’t want to trouble you –” he says, and he is not sure if it is true or not but he knows he does not want her to just walk away like before – “But if you need any help – moving in – or anything – I’m in flat six I could –”

“I’ll be fine,” she says immediately. She pauses and adds with the most incredible awkwardness – “But – thank you.”

He smiles. He feels as though he might start to glow from within at that slight dawn of trust, almost but not quite friendliness in her eyes – as though both of these are things she has no previous experience of. He does not want to push this too far but he holds his hand out to her all the same, as though he was just the guy who’d lived here for years and she was just the girl who’d moved in two doors down.

“I’m Athos,” he says, and this time she really does smile, he sees it glitter with faint wicked amusement reaching all the way to her eyes.

“I know who you are,” she shakes her head a little and just for a moment every dungeon encounter lies between them in the space between his hand and hers, the times she has seen him on the floor and begging for whatever she will give him, the hot curl of her voice licking around him and the touch of her cane on his skin. For a moment he wishes none of it were there and that he could really just be seeing her now for the first time. In another way he knows, he is really just seeing her now for the first time and he would not give up those encounters for the world, even now feeling himself growing awkwardly hard in the apartment corridor. She takes his hand, in the same awkward way in which she said thank you, and he is at once rendered dizzy by her touch and startled by the way she shakes hands like a child, just learning how.

“Well,” she says “Hello.”

He waits for her to give him her name in return but she smiles, lets go of his hand and leaves him standing in the corridor, unable to do anything but watch her turn and go up the stairs quicker than he can follow.

__x__


	3. Chapter 3

**3.**

It would be so easy, he thinks – it would be a matter of seconds – to check her mail box and find out her name. He has seen her go by with post, so she gets something from somewhere – he has wondered where more than he would like – wondered what she does when she goes out during the day. He catches himself giving the flat four mail box the side-eye every time he goes to his own. He goes away every time, disgusted with himself for thinking it but prouder than he knows he should be for not giving in.

They do not speak for days after that first encounter, though he often sees her leaving the building at the same time as he goes out to work. He has smiled to her, sometimes started to raise a hand in a wave and stopped himself. She smiles back, but it is always hurried and, he thinks, perhaps tense. He cannot get used to seeing her like this and so often, but he knows with all his heart that he could get used to it in the best of ways. Every time he gets a glimpse he feels that same urge to ask her to stay that came to him that first time, as though to have her leave his sight once entering it is unthinkable and awful, as though it is like watching his own limb walk away without him. He knows it is ridiculous and worries that he is becoming obsessed and strange. But it sometimes seems like an impossibility that he manages to get through work and through his days as normal. It frightens him how much he wants, not just to touch her – though just that seems like an unthinkable height of achievement, perhaps one that he will never attain. There is more than that, he knows, though he cannot explain why or what. He is ashamed of how much he thinks about her alone, often as not with a hand around his cock but even this does not shame him as much as the terrified urge to ask her out every time he sees her.

It sounds like it would be simple. Childishly simple. But the idea of it makes him as hot and flustered as the idea of speaking to a girl did when he was twelve. He feels no older now at the thought of finding the words to ask. Worse, he knows, without having to ask, that she would say no. He knows that he has asked girls out between childhood and now and that it was never like this before. He wonders what it is about her that unmans him so completely. He knows – and it is painful every time he remembers it – that he knows almost nothing about her.

As the week draws closer to Friday he thinks more and more about whether or not he will keep up their usual appointment at the club. He applies logic to the question as though it were a case he were working on in the office. Thinking about it in any other terms is too difficult, too confusing, frightening even. He  examines the reasons why he would not do so first – the concern as to whether it would be strange or disconcerting to her to see him there having seen him elsewhere and whether it would be likewise strange or even somehow disrespectful for him to go to her like that now. He wonders if keeping up these appointments is the thing that ruins or could continue to ruin any chance of her saying yes should he ever actually muster up the courage to ask her – he flushes at the thought, childish though both that and his reaction to it are – to go out with him. To _date._ It has never really occurred to him as something people really do, but with her he has no other idea in his mind of how to progress.

He turns his mind to the consequences of _not_ going. He would miss it, that is certain, though it is a small concern in the face of everything else. More to the point he fears that she will see his absence as an insult, construe that he is no longer interested in her. Worse, perhaps she will realise that it is more a result of a shift in his interest and a wish on his part for more than he could pay her for. Finally he considers the question of payment – he wonders if she relies on it; it has not slipped his mind that £200 a week is a lot of money, probably more to her even than it is to him. He is without a doubt that if she did not get this from him she would be forced to fill his slot with somebody else. Even though he knows he can hardly be her only client as it is, it sickens him more than it should to imagine her with anyone else. It is this, in the end, selfishly perhaps – that makes him finally decide to go on Friday night as usual.

If she is surprised to see him, she does not let it show beyond a raised eyebrow as she opens the dungeon door. He stares at her more than before, unable to see the same woman that he has seen coming to and from her apartment in this exquisite creature in taffeta and lace. She dazzles him either way and he can barely think beyond the sight of her.

“You came,” she says, faint suspicion in her eyes – “I wondered –” she lets it hang, it is already more than he has ever had from her by way of pleasantries. He wonders if she is trying to adjust the balance of what she knows of him just as he is doing with her. If she is, she does it easier than he does.

“Did I give you permission to look at me?” she says, switching tone with an icy suddenness that goes straight to his cock. She locks the door almost threateningly, throwing a scornful,

“get on your knees,” dismissively over her shoulder. He does; instantly, gratefully. She turns to him with that smile that curls the fire in the pit of him but never makes it to her eyes. She knows the game so well and he is sure that this time, if possible, she is playing it even harder than usual; she wraps fire around him with her words, sharpening and softening him as though her mouth were on his skin, not just whipping him to a frenzy with a tongue that does not touch him. She knows too well that he wants so much more than he is allowed and she uses his very gratitude for what she will give him against him until he is on all fours at her feet like the dog she calls him, whimpering in divine distress that is as much bliss as it is awful. She does it to him twice this time, leaving his body racked with more sensation than he thought he could take and the rest of him still grasping for more. He wonders if she enjoys doing this, what it means to her, he wishes he could ask. He is sure that when he finally looks up at her it is to see a glimmer of real pity in her eyes as she looks back down with a thoughtful air that he cannot fathom. He asks if he can pay her double for taking up more of her time than usual, and she accepts as though she did not expect anything else.

He stops again before he leaves, still holding on for a moment to the hand with which she has graciously helped him to his feet. He can feel the warmth and the shape of her fingers through the velvet and sees himself so clearly drawing off the glove to kiss each one.

“Can I –” he does not dare to meet her eye, as though she has ordered him once more to look away – “If you’re finished, can I walk you home?”

She smiles tightly, sighing with tired exasperation all at once –

“You can’t keep –” she begins and stops – “I can’t be – I – I’m _not_ finished,” she decides – “But thank you.”

He does not want to think of her with someone else, but he cannot fail to be aware that this is exactly what her not being finished here entails. He cannot say this; but neither can he keep it from his eyes when he looks up at her almost angrily in response. He does not say anything but lets go of her hand and starts towards the door, stopping the instant she starts to speak and turning in surprise at the notes of her voice –

“I can’t do this,” she says, surprising him and – from what he can see in her face, herself at least as much. His heart sinks at the thought that this is it, that he has pushed too far and this is her refusing him permission to ever come back. She sees this and shakes her head. There is a plea in her eyes, a desperate need for him to understand her, her hand taps nervously at the hollow of her throat, a strange defensive gesture at odds with the cane in her other hand – “I can’t be two people at once,” she amends herself – “That’s what you’re asking, isn’t it? But I can’t – I can be two people of course, I can be as many people as anyone could ask – but not at once. Don’t you see? You could leave with Milady de Winter but you’d lose her on the way – you’d arrive home with someone else. I don’t even know why I’m explaining myself to you.”

“You don’t have to.” He softens, softened the instant she started to speak and is now only afraid of the distress in her eyes, creeping into her voice and ashamed of putting her under this pressure – “I wouldn’t expect it. Please don’t –” it is somehow far better – almost comforting – to fall back into the role of pleading with her – than to hear those roles at all reversed. “Don’t say I can’t come back”.

He sees the edge in her eyes soften, she seems to relax though her posture has never changed the whole time.

“There was never any intention of that,” she almost smiles, something in her face suggesting that he is ridiculous though this time he is not sure what it is. He gives a half smile of relief –

“Next week then,” he nods.

“Next week,” she echoes, distantly. At the door he stops again. She is still looking at him, now as though she was expecting this.

“Who, then?” he asks it as quietly as though he is whispering to a small animal not to run off but his heart is hammering to hear what she will say.

“Who what?”

“Who would I arrive home with?”

She pauses for so long, considering the question that he looks away and begins to close the door behind him.

“Anne!” she calls out, startling him, taking a quick step towards him as though now that she has decided to say it she is afraid he will leave before she can. Her eyes are wide and helpless and her hand holds the cane tightly to her side, her smile apologetic and something wild in it – “Her name is Anne”.

He can feel in the shy smile he offers her back an echo of the hope in her face and he inclines his head in almost a bow –

“Thank you.”

It catches in his throat and comes out in a whisper that is almost reverential.

-x-

He does not see her after that for the rest of the weekend, not until Monday evening as he heads towards his flat. He has been riding on her name for three nights, his head singing it, his tongue letting it spill from him every night  as he comes into his hand thinking of her, trying not to think of her, failing every time, spilling out her name and his seed every night for three nights like an incantation, a conjuring. It feels like a spell and on Monday evening when he sees her in the corridor he wonders if it has not in fact worked.

She is knelt on the floor between their flats, cursing, her bag thrown against the wall; she is knelt in a sea of pink and purple, blue and white and yellow. When he looks closer he can see that her sea is one of folded paper flowers in different colours, all shapes and sizes. She is gathering them in angry handfuls like an unwilling goddess of an artificial spring. She looks up when she sees him staring and scowls –

“You could help me instead of just staring.”

His first thought had been to offer to help – he had only lingered out of uncertainty if she would want him to, but then he had been arrested by the sight of her and rooted to the spot like a flower himself.

“Yes,” he says, coming to kneel beside her and gather the flowers that have scattered the furthest – “Of course – I’m sorry, thank you.”

“Thank you?” she looks at him quickly, raising an eyebrow. He is not sure why he said that either.

“I mean –” he wishes he knew why he always becomes so tongue tied in her presence – “What happened?”

“Bag strap broke,” she grunts, eyeing the bag balefully – “Still, I suppose I’ll need it to get them back in.”

He takes the hint and retrieves her bag from where she clearly hurled it after the initial offense. For a moment they stuff her bag with paper flowers until he cannot fail to ask any longer –

“Paper flowers?”

“Uni project,” she sighs.

“You’re a student?”

“Floristry,” she says it quickly, defensively, not looking up at him – “And anthropology joint – don’t ask – but this was a floristry project.”

“I should imagine so,” she looks at him sharply, wondering if he is mocking her. He wishes for the umpteenth time that his sense of humour could ever come off less sarcastic. He had meant it – albeit awkwardly – as a joke. Her eyes narrow and she suddenly laughs, leaning back on her heels with a hand to her mouth as though in apology for laughing.

“You’re funny.”

This time _he_ is not sure if she means it or is mocking him; she sounds amused, faintly surprised. He finds he does not care if she is mocking him, just smiles at the sight of her laughing amidst the flowers around her, in her lap and held in her hand. He remembers, with a deep warmth, how he has dreamed of making her smile, of seeing her in any way happy... This will do, he thinks, this will more than do for now.

“I try. I’m –” he stuffs flowers in her bag hurriedly and gently all at once – “Awkward,” he finishes.

“I’ve noticed.” She is still smiling.

“Did you make all of these?” he finds himself having to think of something, just to move the focus from himself – “They’re good”.

“It’s for flower arranging. We – we’re supposed to practise with real ones, but do you know how much those things cost? And I want to get a lot of practise – so I – make my own.”

He hears that defensive note in her voice again and to assuage whatever has caused it adopts the lightest tone he can –

“Well this is – quite an arrangement.” For half a beat his life feels as though it hangs on whether she’ll take this as the joke it was intended or get offended.

“Shut up.” She laughs as she says it, bending down to sweep the last of the flowers into her hands and he notices a red flush to the back of her neck that makes him want to touch to see if she feels as warm as he does all of a sudden. – “Don’t suppose you know how to sew?” He shakes his head. She shakes the bag punishingly by its remaining strap – “Safety pins then. Thank you –” she says as she stands up, brushing off her jeans from the floor. “For helping I mean.”

“No problem – oh here –” he bends down – “You missed one.”

He notices a tiny flower that has escaped them, forget- me-not blue, no bigger than a fifty pence piece; he holds it out to her in his palm.

“Keep it” she shrugs – “If you want – a memento.” She reaches her hand to touch his as though to curl his fingers around the paper blossom for him, but pulls her hand back after just brushing his fingers as though embarrassed. He is not sure what he treasures more, the flower, the light touch or her frightened crooked smile.

“Would you –” the words start to force their way out before he can stop himself but it does not feel wrong as it has done up until now to ask and so it comes out all in one fast rush – “If- you’re-not-doing-anything-tomorrow-evening-can-I-take-you-for-a-drink-at-the-café-on-the corner?”

“Yes,” she says simply – he is sublimely grateful that she does not leave him hanging, just this once – “Yes. You can open your eyes now, Athos.” He had not realised he had squeezed them shut. She shakes her head tolerantly. “Idiot,” she sighs – “seven?”

He nods, barely able to believe this is happening.

“Okay,” she grins – “Goodnight, Athos.”

“Goodnight,” he feels as though his chest is awash with all of this, all of this and knowing her name – “Anne”.

He drifts to his door as though in a dream, hand curled around the tiny blue flower as though it is a precious living thing he must protect.

__x__


	4. Chapter 4

**Fluff warning! This chapter is so fluffy there are actual literal marshmallows. You have been warned.**

  **4.**

“Athos, are you quite well?” Aramis grins at him insolently for the umpteenth time that day; he is too distracted even to grumble at him for it as quickly as he normally would.

“What?” he looks up guiltily – “Oh yes. Quite. Fine.”

Aramis snorts –

“You don’t seem quite normal, that’s all.”

“He means you seem positively cheerful,” d’Artagnan pipes up. Porthos elbows him.

“He is right though,” he says – “Something we should know about?”

“Why do you all assume there’s a problem just because I’m in a good mood?” Athos looks at them all, frowning, their faces pointed his way like a group of interested meerkats.

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Aramis grins.

“Just if you have a date, we need to know about it,” d’Artagnan offers before they can stop him.

“I do not have a –” Athos wishes, not for the first time that he was a better liar but feels his ears burning almost immediately – “Oh shut up. Shut up the lot of you.”

“He _does_ have a date! _”_ Porthos and Aramis high-five as though there was a bet on this too.

“Well come on, spill the beans! Who is she! What’s her name?”

“Next, you’re going to ask me about her family and prospects,” Athos groans – “What are you, my parents? Besides there will be no _spilling,_ not of any kind.”

Aramis snorts, d’Artagnan giggles. Porthos raises an eyebrow and gently states –

“Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.”

“You’re all terrible people, I hope you know that,” Athos grumbles, but a moment later he cannot resist – it has been ringing like a song around his head all day –

“Anne,” he says, just like she did – “Her name’s Anne.”

He thinks about the question and how she answered it, more so that she answered it positively. He had not dared to hope that she would, but for just a moment when he had knelt beside her, he had felt for the first time as though he could ask and she might not say no. He is still shocked and surprised by his own daring. He had tried not to think of it seriously before, of how much he has wanted this, of how much he has imagined her being a part of his life. He knows how far away that still is; that he should not spring to the imaginings he cannot help but spring to. He wonders what stopped her before and what made her say yes to him now. He keeps returning, above all, to the flower he placed so gently on the table beside his bed that night, how it was the first thing he saw when he awoke and how he had to reach to touch it to reassure himself that the memory of the previous evening was true.

All the way home, he feels as though he is walking on air; passing the flower shop he is seized with inspiration and dives in quickly before he can warn himself sensibly out of it. He stares into his closet for a full ten minutes after showering, agonising until the point of near actual pain as to the correct level of appropriate attire. His brain talks to him strictly as he dresses – throwing ties to the floor as too formal and trainers across the room as too casual – it tells him not to be an idiot, to make his words work. It drags him to and fro reminding him what an idiot he has managed to sound like in all his interactions with her so far. He wonders if he _can_ be interesting, if he is likeable, if certain turns of phrase sound funny or just bizarre. He frets about being too quiet, too loud, too funny, too dull. What if he talks too much? What if he cannot find words at all? How does he balance listening and talking? Polite interest with obsessive curiosity? It has never all seemed quite so important before, as though his life hangs upon these social balancing acts. He wonders if it is the same for her but imagines she finds it easy, that she always has the right words and knows how to be.

Or who to be. He thinks about what she said _I can be anyone you want._ Of course she can, she does it for a living. He worries about this too – does he bring her job up at all? Can he acknowledge what they have had there? Or does he pretend to have no clue of her beyond Anne? He does not want to lie but neither does he want to bring up another persona if it is Anne who shows up tonight. He cannot imagine her being anyone else under the circumstances but nothing is certain. He tries not to think in terms of the future but he knows that if they have one, if it might be possible – then Milady will have to be brought up eventually. He knows without having to question himself that he cannot share her but he knows just as well that he has no right to insist, not yet, perhaps not ever. He tells himself, as he has told himself before, that this thought is too presumptuous, too confident that there will be anything beyond this evening. It is easier to push this one to the side.

At ten to seven, he stares at his watch wondering if it is better to be early, late or completely on time. In the end the officer inside him wins and he aims for the latter, nothing else feeling quite right to him.

He times it well, and appears outside the café at seven o clock exactly. She is already there – but he suspects only just – hovering just outside the door as though wondering whether to wait inside or out. She turns, biting her lip, her coat flaring out like skirts; he wonders if she knows how graceful she is and how faltering at the same time, her movements like a dance she does not quite know the steps to.

“I’d wait for him inside,” he says – “I mean – if you were going to.”  He shrugs – “Anyone making you wait might not be worth it”. She looks at him, a quick flash of suspicion in her eyes that seems first nature to her quickly softening into an apprehensive smile.

“Still an idiot,” she sighs. “Here –” she holds the door open – “Let me get that for you before you hurt yourself.” He pauses for a moment, sense of chivalry bewildered by her holding the door for him, but goes through before he can start to look foolish, and suspects he will have to question a lot of his ideas if he is to get used to her. And he wants to get used to her, he only has to look at her to know it. He is certain he has never seen her more beautiful – but then he is sure of that every time he sees her. She looks around as she comes in, almost nervously, as though she has never been in a place like this. He finds it hard to believe that she can sweep through a club like a queen but is awkward and almost shy in a coffee shop. Her lips are a dark red that does not quite suit her but match her top and her nails when she pulls off her gloves. He has to stop himself from staring at her hands, forces himself to remember his words –

“What can I get you?” He is proud of himself again for remembering.

“Hot chocolate,” she says it quickly, as though she has thought about it, learning her part better than he has – “I’ll get us a table?” He nods and watches her head for the furthest corner, out of the way of other people and is glad, reassured by seeing that it is where he would have picked as well. He is still thinking about the fact that she used the word _us_ when the lady asks him if he wants cream and marshmallows with that and he panics for a moment, looking over his shoulder wondering if he should call over and ask and at the same time unable to do that and finally guesses wildly and orders cake to cover up his confusion, again uncertain of what she would like and picking the prettiest.

“Oh!” she smiles at him when he reaches their table – “You got marshmallows!”

“Is that – I can change it if – I mean I didn’t –” he stammers, but she grins delightedly and he falls silent, wishing he could speak less, thinking of all the times Aramis has berated him for being too taciturn and wishing he could make this one of those times.

“It’s perfect,” she sighs, watching him with amusement – “Sit down.”

“I – um – I got cake.” He pushes hers across the table, French tart with an arrangement of fruit, glazed and shining, bright as jewels  – “I didn’t know what you’d like, so I –” suddenly _got the prettiest_ sounds too ridiculous for him to even utter but her eyes are bright and her smile flutters like a candle flame, telling him he did right.

“It’s beautiful,” she says, something oddly child-like in her eyes, and she grins again. “I love cake”. She blushes and looks down, eating for a moment with a faint flush to her cheeks as though she has given something vital away. He opens his mouth to speak but realises with a sudden flood to his system that the only words that will come out will all of a sudden be _I love you._ He realises, not quite hearing himself say it, that it is true and has been for some time. He wonders how long and what will come of it. He wonders if she knows. He swallows his coffee hastily so as not to stare at her too hard.

“I knew it,” she says and when he sets his cup down he can see that now she is watching him, smiling, amused but ever so slightly wary.

“Knew what?”

“You’re a cop.”

“How did you – what makes you think?”

“I had a hunch,” she shrugs – “And you just confirmed it with your coffee.”

“You’re saying – I drink coffee like a cop?”

She nods and then laughs, pushing her hair back behind her ear as it falls into her face –

“Don’t look so worried. If anyone should be worried it’s me.”

“You’ve not – I mean I’m not going to –” he stops.

“Can I ask you something?” he is relieved that she would, relieved beyond measure not to have to take control of the conversation. He nods.

“What brought you to the club that first time?”

“Are you suggesting I didn’t belong there?” he raises an eyebrow and she laughs –

“I wouldn’t dare,” she grins. “Of course you didn’t. You know you didn’t. You looked like a nun at a rave. So come on – who dragged you?”

“My friend –” he sighs, defeated – “Aramis. He bullied me. I had no choice.”

“Aramis?” She raises an eyebrow.

“You know him?” he has a sudden terrible thought that she might know him and Porthos all too well. It makes his stomach flip to think of it.

“Not personally,” she shakes her head – “But I know a few girls who do. They’re alright. They work with you?”

He nods.

“Funny,” she says – “I always thought if the police came, it would be to close us down, not to – it bothers you doesn’t it? To talk about this?”

He thinks about it. He had wondered if they would, or if they would dance around the issue the whole time. But here she was, diving straight in. He wonders why. She reads him like a book.

“Because we have to you see,” she says – “If this – whatever this is – is to go anywhere you have to know that I won’t give it up for you and I’m afraid you won’t – that you would expect me to and I can’t have you as both a client and as – as something else you see?”

“I see.” He thinks he does anyway. He cannot believe how much she has considered this. She has done better than he has. He only knows that he needs her, and wants her, and God it is madness to him, but if she insists he might even take this on her terms however much it kills him to think of her replacing her Friday evening slot. He thinks he might accept anything to get to know her better. She nods, watching him closely, her fingers steepled beneath her chin –

“You see – ” she says slowly – “You’re too good a client to risk losing to anything that would not make it worthwhile and you mustn’t expect me to do what I do for a living for free because I don’t – certainly not for a while – but – if you’ll take that then – then if you ask me out again, I’ll say yes again if nothing else. Can you? Can you accept that – for now?”

He swallows down his heart, tasting it in his throat –

“Yes,” he hears himself say through the roaring in his ears and his hand reaches almost unconsciously across the table. Her fingers touch his palm before he squeezes her hand in his, and there is something urgent too in the way she squeezes back. She takes her hand back a moment later and takes a sip of chocolate, putting her cup down and leaning back. She closes her eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” she says – “I’m not very good at this?”

“At – talking?”

“I’m excellent at talking,” she smiles – “And good at cake. No – it’s the dating I struggle with – I haven’t –”

“This is the first date I’ve been on in ten years,” he offers to assuage her embarrassment. She looks him in the face and he notices for the first time how green her eyes are, how warm and how calculating all at once.

“This is the first date I’ve been on,” she says simply.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Why?” her voice is slightly sharp. “Because I’m beautiful? I know – I know I shouldn’t say that, but you think it and you wouldn’t be the first to tell me. It doesn’t always mean men treat you like a person. See –” she looks down at her cup – “I told you I was bad at this.”

“No –” he frowns. “Please - you’re perfect.”

“Now I find _that_ hard to believe.” He feels as though he must be red-faced looking at her but she is blushing too and looks away and he dives on hurriedly –

“Can I ask _you_ something?”

“You can ask,” her tone implies she may not tell him but he finds this somehow reassuring all the same.

“Can I ask why I’m too good of a client to lose?” he wonders how he dares to ask and is sure she will not answer, but she smiles.

“What? You think it’s more than just two hundred a week?” she arches an eyebrow and for a moment almost fools him. “No, of course,” she presses her lips together as though to hide an amusement that might make him nervous. “You’re safe,” she says, thoughtfully. “You’d be surprised how much that means. You don’t push, you don’t demand, you’re sweet and positively respectful. A lot of girls would pay for that, let alone have someone pay them.”

There is something more, he thinks, that she is not saying, but he takes her at her word and does not push it.

“Wow,” he says softly – “Well I – sound great. Why _would_ you give that up?”

“Because –” she bites her lips again, looking at him steadily, her eyes wary, almost frightened – “Because you would ask me on a date like this? Because you didn’t check the mail boxes when I didn’t tell you my name -” She looks down and then closes her eyes, saying the last part fast – “Because I’d thought about it. Even just at the club. Because I think – it could be worth it – don’t you?”

“Yes,” he breathes it out like an _amen –_ “Yes I do.” He wishes he could touch her hand again but she has removed hers from the table, one hand in her lap, the other unconsciously raised to brush against her throat, He remembers not to press, not to hurry her, realises that he has all but promised not to ask too much, not even to touch her if it means she will see him like this again.

“I’m free Sunday,” she says, smiling now, tremulous, almost breathtakingly shy – “If you don’t come to the club on Thursday.”

“Where would you like to go – or – is there anything you’d like to do?”

“I like –” she frowns as though the question is a hard one, as though nobody has ever asked her this before – “flowers?” She winces as though she wishes she could come up with a better answer.

“How about the rose gardens at Hyde park?” He is silently awash with relief that he took a stroll there last weekend. It provides him with further revelation. “I could – make a picnic.”

“Picnic in the park,” she shakes her head, laughing softly. “You’re like an old time book for boys – it sounds lovely,” she adds quickly, before he can get concerned. She looks at him for a long time, shaking her head minutely, that laughter in her eyes that dazzles and shifts like streetlights in the rain –“Where did you come from?” She murmurs almost to herself. He cannot stop himself –

“I have been asking myself the same question.”

“Oh?” Her smile becomes mischievous – “You don’t know where you come from either?”

“Where _you_ come from.”

“Some questions –” her voice is light but her smile hides a shadow in her eyes – “Are best left questions. Come on.” She stands up, gathering up her coat – “You can walk me home.”

It starts to rain as they leave the café. He offers her his arm, unsure if he can bear her refusing it or her taking it. She freezes for a moment as though unsure but she slips her hand into his offered arm and turns just a  little to look at him, a nervously happy smile on her pale face, shining in all the lights of the city by night. All the short way home he has to remember to breathe, can barely think that she is here on his arm. He wonders if his smile is too obvious, if his happiness is too intense. He only knows that he cannot now stomach the thought of living in the world without her and wonders how he came to fall so hard so fast.

They say goodbye at the door to his apartment and he takes her hand, pressing it lightly in his fingers, wondering if he can kiss it. He does not, but he lets his fingers brush over her palm and feels as though he could live on this for a long time. When she turns to go he finds himself rooted to the spot long enough to hear her mutter “Idiot!” when she finds the flowers he left by her door, a bouquet in every colour with a note that reads;

_“I didn’t know what colours you liked so I got them all – so you can arrange some real ones next time.”_

__x__

**For everyone loving the fluff: it’s gonna continue for at least two more chapters! Yay!**

**For everyone hating the fluff: bear with us, it’s gonna get proper grim in at least four chapters time** **J**

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Happy valentine’s day peoples! Have some incredible fluff!**

 

**5.**

It had not occurred to him on Tuesday just how far away Sunday could feel. It seemed impossible to think that there had ever been a time when his world had not centred around her, and now a hundred tiny things were all conspiring to kill him by slow degrees. Thinking about Tuesday night, her voice, the brush of her hand; thinking of the Sunday to come alternately trembling with excitement and terror, coming home every day and leaving in the mornings always with a hope of seeing her coming in or going out herself that built itself up to expectation every time rushing through his head and then turning to numbness when she was not there. And then knowing how close she was – that above all. Thinking about the layout of the apartments, it had occurred to him that her bedroom would back on to his. He found himself guiltily half listening for her, shame-facedly wondering if her bed might not be backed onto his with just the wall in between their heads at night.

He wished his shame could take him somewhere, afford him some sort of relief as it had in the past, but when Friday came round it was terrible to know that he would not see her. He felt shaky all day as though he were depriving himself of a drug to which he did not know he had become addicted. When five o’clock came, he heard himself mutter an intent to stay behind and work late.

Porthos hung back when the others had left, leaning in the doorway and watching him steadily.

“You not going out tonight then?” he said finally.

“Hmm.” Athos did not look up from his paperwork, aware of the look he would be getting, feeling himself burning beneath the weight in the question – “No, not tonight.”

“Only you usually leave early Fridays, never late, that’s all. Everything alright?”

“Oh yes.” Athos did look up then, deciding that he could at least try to keep up an appearance of the casual – “Everything’s fine.” He stopped himself from smiling reassuringly with the reminder to himself that this might be over-doing it. Porthos looked at him a moment longer as though he would like to ask more but settled for a suspicious _hmmm_ and _goodnight then_ before leaving to catch up with the others. Left alone, the office soon began to feel painfully silent, and an hour later Athos put his papers in order and headed home.

This time, of course, she _was_ passing his door just as he arrived. She was dressed in a long black coat with a hood that covered her almost like a cloak, and he felt his throat growing dry, wondering if she was already dressed for work. He nodded in lieu of speech, wondering what in the world he could say and to his relief she simply nodded back before sweeping past, leaving that faint jasmine scent behind her that made his head reel and his hands unsteady around his keys. He imagined that scent, her voice, those eyes, all working on someone else in his place tonight and felt terribly sick at the thought. He drank more than he ought that night and woke on Saturday, head aching, moaning internally upon remembering that he had a picnic to prepare.

Seven hours and a frantic phone call later, he heard Aramis’s voice outside the door muttering loudly as though at the end of some debate –

“At least he’s got a date though – this has to be a good thing.”

Athos opened the door to him and Porthos and they walked slowly into the kitchen, surveying the mess and the black smoke coughing out of the oven in horror.

“Ok – most definitely not a good thing,” Aramis pronounced, Porthos grabbing him by the scruff of his collar as he turned around to promptly walk out again. As if on cue, the smoke alarm went off for the twentieth time. Aramis closed his eyes in pain; Porthos went through to the living room and opened all the windows he could find. Athos stood in the kitchen numbly, resigned and wondering what his life had come to.

“Alright,” said Porthos, when the smoke had dispersed and he had sat everyone down at the kitchen table with coffee – “What were you actually trying to do?”

“I was going –” Athos mumbled, indicating the floury, burnt messes that covered the kitchen – “Wasgonnamakeapicnic.”

“A picnic?” Aramis raised an eyebrow – “Says the man who gets frightened if you can’t just stick it in the microwave for ten minutes and eat out of the plastic tray. _Why_ are you making a picnic?”

“I have a date.”

“Told you,” Porthos muttered in a loud aside to Aramis, who gave him the finger in return.

“Do you even have a picnic basket?”

“No,” Athos stared at Aramis, terrified. “No, I –”

Aramis hefted one on to the table; it was a large, old fashioned basket work affair, fully kitted out, as he informed Athos slowly, with all the utilities it had not even occurred to Athos to need.

“Right,” Porthos stood up, business like – “Aramis – sandwiches, I’ll show this fool how to bake cookies, if this oven even still works.  Tell me you still have spare foodstuffs.”

Athos nodded, relieved that if nothing else, his three panicked trips to the shop had been successful. Two hours later Aramis closed the lid of the filled picnic basket with a satisfied tap.

“Do take care of it –” he rested a hand on it protectively as he pushed it across the table to Athos – “It was my mother’s.”

“It’s a picnic basket love, not your baby,” Porthos sighed, patting Aramis in rather the same style he had the basket. “You reckon you’ve got this now?” He turned to Athos with the question. Athos nodded, not sure if he had or how he would even start to thank them.

“Hmm.” Porthos grunted suspiciously again. “Last question mate – and you owe us this time.”

“Go on.”

“Your Anne – she’s Milady de Winter, isn’t she?”

Athos sighed, wondering why he had ever imagined his friends weren’t smart enough to work it out, but at the same time not entirely sure how to answer, ears burning that Porthos had called her _his_  –

“Yes –” he said slowly – “Yes, in a way.”

Aramis nodded, Porthos shook his head.

“Just take care won’t you?” Aramis said, Porthos adding –

“You do know what you’re doing don’t you?”

Athos sighed deeper –

“No,” he groaned softly, seeing them to the door – “No, I have no idea.”

But it did not matter, he thought, when they had gone, if he knew what he was doing or not; he loved her and there was nothing he could do about it.

-x-

He wakes Sunday morning to a golden sun streaming through the curtains, a gentle breeze chasing the last of the burning smells out of the flat. He wakes with delight, remembering how he had gone to bed so certain it would rain that he had been ready to be angry about it. He glares at the clock telling him how early it is, impatient for it to be midday and time to see her. _Don’t wake me early_ she had said, _I don’t do mornings._ But he has woken early every day since he could remember and was not sure how to do anything else. He frets; stopping and starting things for four hours until it is time to leave.

It only occurs to him in the corridor that he has never actually knocked on her front door before, or even stopped there longer than it took to leave flowers. It feels almost agonisingly daring, as though he is pushing the limits of her privacy; still he remembers that she told him he could. The two minutes he stands there waiting feel like forever, in which time he wonders if he dreamed the whole thing and she never really agreed to this at all. He is almost ready to turn away, convinced of it, when the door opens just a crack at first, and she is there, peering at him with a half second of suspicion before she sees who it is and opens the door completely. He feels terrible for wanting to see the inside of her flat but it is not much before she is out in the corridor and closing the door behind her- enough to see that it is neater than his is but with more inside it all at the same time.

He tries to stop staring at her – he wonders if he will ever get better at this – she is wearing a blue skirt and white blouse that ought to look old fashioned but somehow don’t on her. He can hear the skirt whisper when she walks. Her hair is pinned half back and he is overcome as ever with the wish to touch it, bury his hands and face in that hair, and he remembers with a pang that she told him to expect nothing. She would not give for free what she does for a living, she says, and he understand too well and too painfully what she meant by it, understands too that his desires and the pain of it are irrelevant next to her right to demand this from him. But it does not stop him wanting.

“Well?” she says, that arched eyebrow, that crooked smile and he knows he has been staring again too obviously – “Shall we?”

“Do you – will you be alright – do you not need a coat?” he tries to say it as though he has not been staring at her arms and throat but suspects he is all too transparent.

“Hmmm, I don’t know,” she says – “I thought of it – but it seems warm enough and I don’t feel the cold so much. No,” she decides – “I’ll be alright – is that the picnic?” she eyes his basket with some approval, much to his relief.

“It is.”

“Well, what’s in it?”

“That would be telling.” He gives her half a smile and they leave together. They take the Underground to Hyde Park corner, Athos surprised to find her taking the lead in negotiating the crowds – she pushes charmingly, without it ever quite seeming as though she is pushing; she more slips through the crowds as though she is used to them, following its flow and its currents and he follows like a boat dragged behind her. She throws coins to a homeless man at the bottom of the escalator, playing a few notes at random on a mouth organ. He frowns and almost points out that it’s not really legal for them to be down here. He does not say it but she sees something in his face she does not like all the same.

“It’s cold down here at night,” she says, scowling at him faintly and walking on quickly. They stand on the train and when it jolts it sways her against him and he holds onto the hand rail tighter, acutely aware of the feel of her, of her hair tickling his chin. She laughs – perhaps in part at his discomfort- and looks up at him smiling and holding onto his arm to steady herself. She is not quick to let go once they reach their destination, only doing so to lead the way out and up above ground again and he is relieved to be back in the sun where his steps are not timed and he is not crushed in.

“You really don’t like the Underground, do you?” she grins as they walk.

“Is it that obvious?”

“Only a lot.”

“Well really who does? Do you?”

“No, not at all, but I at least seem to know my way around.”

“I don’t – I suppose I don’t get out much.”

“Do you drive?”

“Only for work. Driving in London’s like walking, but slower.”

“I imagine that’s true,” she smiles. “I didn’t think it was something worth learning.”

“Have you always lived here?”

“Yes. Have you?” He is surprised at how little she gives him but answers her all the same –

“I grew up in Kent. A tiny village in the country no-one ever heard of. It’s – different.”

“Different good, or different bad?”

“Both I think.”

“Country boy then,” she smiles – “That explains the way you move in a crowd.”

“Oh does it?”

“So much,” she laughs, teasing him with her smile – “Oh!” she adds as their path takes them under a covered archway trellised with flowers. He smiles at her surprise and thinks about taking her hand, but she runs off in front of him to examine the flowers creeping up the lattice work, lightly touching the white and purple petals; the sun falls in bars through the framework and she is in both shadow and sun. He thinks about kissing her in a place like this and closes his eyes against how strongly he can see it.

“I never knew!” she turns to him smiling, her eyes wide and dark in the shade – “I had no idea this was here!” They come out of the tunnel and she stands blinking in the light, smiling at the flowers and drifting to the rose bushes of the ordered garden over to their right. He is not sure what is more beautiful – the pleasure she takes in it all, her curiously simple childish excitement or the image of her in the sunlight, bent over the rose bushes, touching the pink petals as tenderly as if they had been alive, sun in her hair and the blue silk of her skirt swishing around her ankles. He wishes he could take a picture and keep her image like this forever, but it does not seem right to ask. She moves from plant to plant, unable to not touch things and to examine them. He smiles, watching her; he has walked this way so many times but it seems now as though he has never seen any of it before, she sees the pattern on every leaf and is interested in it.

“Funny,” she says when she drifts back to him – “How you can live in a city all your life and never see so much of it. I never understood why people travel to see new things. There is always so much to see here.”

“Yes,” he says, agreeing with her so intensely that he does not know what else to say. She makes so much feeling rise in his chest that it all but stops his words from coming past.

“There are so many different Londons,” she murmurs as they walk on – “All in the same place. Strange to think –” she breaks off and he wonders what she is thinking about. He thinks he knows what she means because she makes him think similar thoughts – she is like the city herself, so many different faces, never the same look twice. He cannot categorize or summarise her and is not sure he wants to. They walk on, passing the rose gardens and towards the shine of the Serpentine; outside the gallery there are children running across the path, people perched with coffee cups on an art installation constructed outside. She takes his hand. He nearly exclaims for pleasure just as she did when she saw the flowers, but he swallows it in time.

“Where do you want to stop?” he asks as they walk on, following the path alongside the lake.

“Oh anywhere,” she says- “Everywhere is so nice – that’s not helpful is it?” she laughs and looks around – “There,” she points up a grassy slope away from the river, where it’s quiet and there is one large unoccupied tree.

“Alright,” he says and they swerve off the path. She moves ahead of him, tugging a little, her hand is so soft and feels so small in his, like cradling a leaf still on the tree. When he drags she lets go laughing and runs off ahead of him. He watches her under the tree, marvelling at her. She stands with her arms held out lightly, holding her hands into the breeze as though she would like to feel everything the day has to offer, her eyes squeezed in a squint as she looks up through the leaves at the sun filtering down, gold and green on her face and he wants to keep her, to hold onto her like she tries to hold on to the breeze. It feels almost the same.

“Here?” he asks, catching up to her.

“Here,” she nods, looking at him expectantly. He remembers Aramis telling him there was a picnic blanket rolled up in the basket lid, and he gets it out and she lets him fight the breeze with it a while, laughing at him before she helps him spread it down beneath the tree and she sits down, like royalty, he thinks, taking care of her skirt and looking at him again, peering to try and see into the basket as he opens it, asking him what’s inside so brightly he makes a game of not letting her see; rather removing things one by one as she watches like a bird, smiling he thinks approvingly as he lays out sandwiches, pork pies, boiled eggs and crisps then pauses, teasing her as she blinks at him owlishly.

“Where is the cake?” she asks in such a funny voice that he has to laugh –

“What cake?” He raises an eyebrow at her, unable to stop himself smirking.

“The _cake,”_ she insists as though this was something they had ever discussed.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he looks at her sideways – “I didn’t think you liked – no –” he laughs, shaking his head – “I can’t. Your face – here.” He brings out the cookies, followed by some cupcakes he bought later last night in a panic that she would not like the cookies. He also finds a metal tin stashed in the corner of the basket that, when opened, reveals a fantastically sticky, chocolatey smelling sponge cake, no doubt from Aramis. She beams.

“Did you make these?”

“I made cookies,” he confesses – “Then I got cupcakes in case the cookies were terrible. I almost burned the flat down,” he admits, and begins telling her of his trials the day before and of Porthos and Aramis’s timely intervention and his heart swells when he catches her looking at him with merriment in her eyes and laughing as he tells it.

“Well,” she says when he is finished – “If the whole place burns down I shall know who to blame.”

“I never cooked before,” he admits.

“What – never? What do you eat?”

“I have a microwave.”

She snorts and rolls her eyes –

“Men. I’m learning to cook, I’ll have to feed you some time.” He looks at her wide eyed wondering if she means it.

“Well yes,” she answers his unspoken question, shrugging as though it’s no big deal – “I’ve only just started teaching myself it would be a good test of how I was getting on.”

“Well as someone who has rarely used their oven except to catch it on fire yesterday I can promise you a grateful audience.”

“You’re always a grateful audience,” she says and then blushes and looks away. He suspects he grows even redder than she does, at the same time feeling his heart beat as though it will burst, wondering if she really _is_ flirting with him.

“So what – he scrambles for a question to cover their blushes – “What made you decide to learn? Have you –” he remembers that she said she was a student – “Have you not been living away from home long?”

She snorts –

“I’ve _lived away from home_ since I was twelve.” Something in her tone as well as the reply makes him feel bad for the question, but she brushes it off before he can do it for her, like a crumb – “I just felt like it would be nice to learn and – I dunno – to have nice things.” She shrugs. He notices that her accent slips for a brief moment, the barest whisper only on an H on _Have_ and he realises for the first time that the well-spoken purr he has become accustomed to is the result of maybe years of conscious work. Again he says nothing, instead pushing the sandwiches her way and she thanks him in a more perfect voice than ever when she takes two.

“I brought wine,” he says, bringing out the bottle – “And lemonade if you didn’t want it.”

“Lemonade?” she grins – “Like real kids book lemonade?”

“I’m almost certain it’s seen real lemons too.”

She laughs –

“Can I have both?”

“In the same glass?”

“Urgh no, that’s barbaric, what are you?” He pours her a glass of each, weeping in internal gratitude at the state of Aramis’s picnic basket.

“Thank you,” she smiles, holding up a glass – “Cheers.” He taps her glass gently with his, a gentle crystal chinking in the afternoon air, with the sun glittering crystals on the surface of the wine.

“You know people used to tap glasses to make sure they weren’t poisoning each other?” she says.

“Are you implying something?”

“It’s not so easy anymore,” she laughs – “You’d get caught. Besides if I was going to poison someone I can think of better candidates than you – for now.” She grins and sips her wine, balances the glass on the grass beside her and looks back down at the picnic around her – “This is far, far too much food for two,” she announces, but somehow they eat it anyway. He does not know how she manages to be so delicate and yet eat so much, with him barely seeing her do it. When everything is eaten down to the last few cookies – which to his relief and thanks to Porthos are not only edible but pleasant, she leans back on her hands, rolling her head up to look skywards and groaning softly.

“That was delicious.” She looks at him, sunlight caught between her teeth and trapped in the corner of her eye – “Can we do it every day?”

“Not _every_ day.” He stretches out as well, lazy in the sun, yawning like a cat and ready to purr with a deeper sense of well-being than he has felt in years.

“ _Ohh,”_ she pouts, mock whining.

“I have work,” he yawns “And you have – studies – you like it, don’t you?”

“What – studying?” she looks at him curiously as though it is something she has never been asked and did not expect him to ask – “Yes,” she says easily – “Yes, I like it very much. I missed a lot of school and I – well I like flowers, and people are fascinating, working out how they work – I’m good at that –” she stops, biting her lip and looking upwards stolidly as though she is about to cry.

“What is it? I’m sorry – what did I say?”

“No I – ” she rubs her eyes and looks at him – “I didn’t expect you to ask. Not about – about what I was actually interested in. I thought you’d want to talk about work.”

“Your work?”

She nods.

“Men generally find what I do for a living far more interesting than I am,” she shrugs. “That’s understandable, I suppose, You, though. You’re not.”

“Not understandable?”

“No. Why would you care?”

“I want to know you.” It is simple to him; he does not see why it is not the same for her – “I wouldn’t want to talk about my job all weekend either.”

“You want –” she stares at him almost scathingly, as though she is on the brink of arguing with him, but then a tear falls silently down her face. He cannot stop himself from touching her cheek with the gentlest of fingers, brushing it away –

“Only if I may,” he says. “I’m sorry?”

“That’s not –” she shakes her head, but when she stills she is smiling. “You can try,” she says and it sounds as though there is a lump in her throat. His fingers move gently round the top of her ear and the side of her jaw. She is staring at him almost afraid, and though her eyes do not close she leans in slightly. He realises that he really could kiss her; that he is allowed this and that she would not move away and for a few electric moments his face crackles with the urgent instinct in him to do it. But he remembers what she said about pushing, he thinks about the fear in her eyes at him just saying he wanted to know her, and he brushes her lower lip with his thumb gently and lets her go. She pushes her face against his hand before he does and he oh-so gently strokes her hair, allowing himself just a few seconds before he turns to the plates and cups on the grass. She is as soft as he imagines, and he knows he will feel her hair through his fingers for as long as the feeling needs to last him. He can feel her take a deep breath beside him as though wrestling with a feeling she is not yet ready to share but a moment later she laughs breathily and points –

“There are _ducks,”_ she announces and there are, waddling in a  determined line from the river across the path and insistently up the green slope towards them as though they are aware that things are being packed away and do not like it. They make a beeline for Athos and the crumbs of the picnic chattering excitedly, large ducklings and mother alike. They look at him in disgust when he snaps the basket shut and looks back at them almost smugly. Anne rests a hand against the tree, weak with laughing.

“Athos are you _scared?”_

“No,” he says too loudly – “I am not _scared –_ here - _”_ he throws her a cookie which she catches – “Then maybe they’ll go away.”

“Feed them a cookie and they’ll go away? Athos have you ever met ducks?” She scatters the cookie crumbs and in the seconds it distracts the birds, she grabs Athos’s hand and runs him away from their tree, laughing. This time she does not let go of his hand again and they walk through the park talking nonsense and nothing until the sky begins to hint at darkening and she shivers.

“It’s getting cold.”

“I told you,” he says – “Here, take my coat.”

“It won’t fit!”

It doesn’t, but he insists anyway, wrapping it around her like a blanket, chest tightening when his hand brushes her shoulder. Her top has slipped and he has been trying not to stare this past hour. Her skin is like velvet and she looks tiny in his coat. He does not know whether to smile or gaze at her. He suspects that he is doing both. She keeps his hand almost all the way home and rests her head against his shoulder as they stand pressed together on the train.

“I had the best day,” she admits, blushing, at the door. “I wish we _could_ do this every day.”

There is so much he wishes for that he can barely speak. He wishes he need not say goodbye. He wishes he could see her every day, talk to her, laugh with her, learn everything about her, even the things she does not want him to know. He wishes he could come home to her every day, wake up beside her, see her very moment he has available. He wishes he could call her his. He knows he ought not to wish for more than half of this but all the same he wishes.

“So what do you want to do next week?” she adds as if in answer to his inability to speak.

“I’m trying to think of something special.”

“More special than that?” she asks, eyes big even gently narrowing at him.

“I’ll think of something,” he says, determined to think of the right thing.

“Do you suppose you’ll have thought by Wednesday?”

“Why Wednesday?”

“Because it’s in the middle of the week and you can meet me then and tell me and we won’t have wait so long.” She grins half shyly and stands on tiptoe to kiss him lightly and quickly on the cheek –

“Here’s my number.”

She seems to magic the note into her hand and then his, and before he can even try to speak he is on his own in the corridor with her number in his hand and the feel of her lips like the breeze against his cheek.

__x__

 

**I’m glad this was done today cause I feel more valid posting something this sappy on Valentine’s day!! I’m also sorry it took so long, was ill, then over – worked and then it grew to 5000 words long and blah blah blah, next chapter shouldn’t take so long I hope!** **J**


	6. Chapter 6

 

**6.**

“I want to do something special,” he says, tapping his pen against the report he has not been writing for almost half an hour through thinking about this. He feels so distracted he is becoming worse at his work than Aramis.

“I knew it!” Aramis grins – “I knew you weren’t really working! _I knew it!”_ he repeats over his shoulder to Porthos who grins and does not need to add that he knew this too.

“Didn’t you already do the whole picnic in the park thing?” he asks instead.

“Yes I did, but –”

“And it went well.”

“Did I say anything?”

“Not a damn thing. But it went well. Look at you.”

“Look at me – what?”

“Dude, you’re out of it, you’re dreaming, away with the fairies – _in Upendi.”_

“What the actual fuck, Porthos?”

“He’s been watching _Lion King_ movies again.” Aramis stands up, patting Porthos on the shoulder – “Yes, while you were getting all hot and steamy this idiot and I were on a Disney marathon. Next question?”

“Who’s your favourite villain?” d’Artagnan pipes up.

“It was a rhetorical _next question,_ new boy,” Aramis rolls his eyes.

“Tamatoa,” Porthos mumbles, sitting down.

“You all do know I’ve been with you two years now?” D’Artagnan sighs.

“Guys!” Athos groans – “None of this is helping – and there was no –” he feels hot and scratches his head self-consciously – “There was no _hot and steamy._ ”

“S’lies,” Porthos grins.

“Big lies,” Aramis adds.

“Guys!”

“Alright, alright!” Aramis raises his hands laughing – “Special – as in grand sweeping gesture get her off her feet and onto her back special?”

“You’re a pig, Aramis,” Porthos offers.

“No, I’ve got this!” Aramis grins – “I can do special!”

“Since when?”

“Shut up Porthos,” Athos grumbles. “Aramis?” He tries not to look at him too pleadingly.

“Okay. Special. So what does she like?”

Athos manages to keep his groan internal, wishing Aramis had started with an easier question –

“She likes ….flowers?” he frowns – “And – cake?”

“Flowers and cake,” Aramis nods sagely – “Well that couldn’t be easier.”  
“It couldn’t?”

“He’s right,” Porthos nods.

“I am right. It’s the Chelsea flower show this weekend. Flowers and cake central right?”

“How would you even know that?”

Aramis raises an eyebrow and throws Porthos a ticket shaped like a paper aeroplane. Porthos grins, unfolding it –

“Aww, you shouldn’t have.”

“I know.”

“No, you shouldn’t have folded it. Now it’s all scrunched. How do I scrapbook this?”

“You scrapbook?” d’Artagnan looks delighted.

“Shut up, new boy.”

“Okay,” Athos tries to regain some control of the situation – “It’s perfect. It is.”

“Only one problem,” Aramis nibbles on a finger nail – “It’s more or less sold out.”

Athos wonders briefly if it would be really unlawful to murder Aramis.

“Why would you give me this and then tell me that?”

“Cause I know for a fact that Ms Bonacieux in the Charing Cross office _hates_ flowers and cake and has already turned our boy here down.”

“It’s true,” d’Artagnan groans – “She’s taking me to the London Dungeon instead. I spent actual hundreds on these.”

He pats the tickets in their envelope on his desk forlornly. 

“Well I’ll buy them off you –” Athos jumps at the chance before pausing – “ _Hundreds?”_

Athos leaves the office that evening with a purse made considerably lighter but a heart just as weightless, having rationalised that after all he was no longer spending his usual hundreds every Friday night and he was doing d’Artagnan a favour.

He speaks to Anne on the phone that night and sees her on Wednesday back at the café on the corner. When he asks her about the weekend and broaches his plan she makes a sound he could never have imagined her making before putting her hand over her mouth half apologetically. When she says goodnight to him she grins again and throws her arms around his neck; he laughs in delight at her happiness and squeezes her back, trying to take the contact as lightly as it is given but wishing he could spend hours holding her, just lying with her – he imagines it – on the sofa or in bed, feeling her hair against his face like this, her chest pressed to his. The more he gets, the more he wants, it seems, and each time she goes back to her own flat he wishes more that he could ask her into his. Still he can see how much more he has seen of her this week and his heart cannot stop singing at every bit of it.

The Sunday after is too slow to come round, even after seeing her twice that week and he wakes already tingling in anticipation, shaky with hope of what the day might bring. Her excitement has her at his door and ready to go by ten, _an ungodly hour_ to be awake on a Sunday, she says. It is warmer than the Sunday past and she is wearing a dress that makes him think of the sunshine, the palest yellow with muted flowers splashed throughout the skirt. Even at this hour her hair is already trying to escape its plait and she brushes it from her neck with fidgety, excited fingers.

“I’ve always wanted to go,” she tells him on the train – “How did you _think_ of it?”

“I didn’t,” he wishes he could lie but he has never been any good at it – “I – um –” he looks at her shyly, wondering how she makes him feel like this – so young and so open – “I asked the guys at work. Aramis and Porthos are going, and I thought you might –”

“You thought right.” She puts him out of his misery, smiling and taking his hand, twisting her fingers into his. He smiles and cannot think beyond their interlaced fingers until they reach their destination.

From the moment they pass the ticket barrier she is like a child at a fun fair and he is not sure he can blame her. He has never seen so much colour in one place in all his life, it is _like stepping into some kind of wonderland_ she breathes, eyes wide as though she cannot look hard enough and she is not wrong, even to his eyes that always come back to her. There are peacocks made out of flowers lining the paths, cars covered with flowers, intricate displays sculpted it seems out of flowers, hiding almost all of the structure beneath. They pass rows upon rows of topiary, animals marching by them and weaving off in all directions, glass houses shining in the sun, but she takes his hand to pull him insistently into the gardens first. She is like a child and a goddess leading him, a butterfly fluttering between everything but always, he sees, heart swelling, gravitating back to him to land at his side and to show him the things she sees. He loves the way she sees things, the way she looks at things. He had not known until now how much he had to learn in this respect.

One of the gardens is described as _interactive_ which they discover on reading the signs means you can pick the flowers and run through lawns that are almost entirely flowers.

“Like a carpet,” she says and she grins and slips of her sandals and runs, crushing petals beneath her feet. He smiles at her curiously and the paths she has crushed behind her.

“I think I’d feel bad,” he says.

“Because it was perfect and now it’s all squished?” She looks at him curiously – “But that’s the point isn’t it? All the bright precious things fade away – isn’t that what makes them beautiful? I read it in a book once.”

“Do they have to?”

“What? Fade away? I always thought so, yes.” Her forehead crumples a little, not quite as though she is sad, more he thinks if she is not perhaps re-thinking. He finds he cannot bear to see her even half way sad, certainly not today. He picks a blossom from an overhanging tree branch and puts in in her hair, tucking it behind her ear. She giggles and it fades into a smile when she sees the way he is looking at her; he holds her arm gently in one hand and brushes her face with the other –

“Athos –” she whispers – “Promise me –” It is impossible, he thinks, his head spinning with daylight and the scent of flowers and her, above everything her; he dips his head to hers, catching the lips she has barely consciously offered him, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. He has dreamed like a schoolboy about kissing her and it is so much more – she folds into his arms as though she belongs there and she is warm and solid, soft and still and heaving all at once and her mouth is like cool water on a hot day, he has wanted this for so long, he holds onto her tightly to make sure she does not slip away like a hundred dreams, drinking her in. His lips and tongue tingle, sparkling against hers, and he can barely believe that she is kissing him back but she is and he wants nothing else and everything else all at once.

They hear footsteps on the garden path and break apart, laughing. She reaches to break another blossom from the tree –

“Your turn,” she grins and he runs away from her before she can put it in his hair and she follows laughing. They walk on hand in hand.

“You know,” he says – “That could have been the Queen.”

“The Queen? What do you mean?”

“Well she always visits, you know. Suppose she’d come round that corner and seen us?”

“It’s not illegal. Maybe she’d be delighted.”

“I don’t think I could kiss in front of the Queen.”

“I could,” she grins.

“Hmm, well you have no respect for monarchy.”

“Hmmm,” she gives that contemplative smile – “No not really no. I suppose you do.”

“Of course!”

“Why of course?”

They are still bickering tenderly about it when they run into Aramis and Porthos in a garden made of pebbles and glass. Porthos cheers in salutation as Aramis nods, almost embarrassed, and Athos makes their introductions.

“Pleasure to finally meet you,” Porthos grins, shaking her hand enthusiastically.

“Oh,” she says “Please don’t say you’ve heard so much about me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Well I’ve heard about you,” she smiles.

“Oh really?”

“Yes, I believe I have you to thank for some excellent cookies and a chocolate cake.”

“Hey that was me! I was the cake!” Aramis protests.

“And Athos here did help some,” Porthos acknowledges graciously.

“If you can call greasing tins and handing over utensils helping.”

“Oh and what did you do, lick out the bowl?”

“I’ll lick out your bowl.”

“I am so sorry about them,” Athos groans, taking her hand and walking her away, waving at them.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Aramis yells.

“Should give you plenty to do!” Porthos’ voice drifts after him, the sounds of their gentle chattering like puppies play fighting in the background.

“I want –” Anne says importantly – “To eat – but I don’t want to go back to the main area just yet, this is so nice, if only we’d thought to bring a picnic again.”

“Well I don’t have a picnic –” Athos says slowly – “But I did pack sandwiches – just in case.”

“You are perfect, did you know?” She beams at him and they find a stone wall in a ruin style garden to eat. An hour later when they come out by the food tents her eyes still light up at the sight of cream teas.

“Really? We just did lunch!”

“Aww” she pouts – “And I thought you were getting to know me better”.

They find a table on the grass, it is small with twisty wrought iron chairs that Athos feels enormous in and the tea comes in china pots with tiny tea cups and saucers.

“These cannot be for adults,” he announces.

“They are,” she grins, pouring and sipping her tea delicately – “Just not for your enormous hands.”

“My hands are not enormous!”

“Oh please –” She puts out her hand – “Come on.” He places his hand against hers, palm to palm; his whole hand quivers at her touch, but she is right, his hand is almost twice the size of hers, when he curls his around hers he  almost covers it completely. He still marvels at her, she negotiates jam and cream with the utmost elegance and she looks as though she is made for this, holding china between her fingers like a sewing needle. When she stands up she smoothes out her dress and he watches the silk ripple against her, suddenly painfully aware of the sun behind her, shining through her skirts, almost translucent in this light. She smiles and to his horror the –

“Oh god,” that he is thinking comes out of his mouth.

“What?” she looks at him innocently for a moment and then stops, arrested by the helplessness and the dark in his eyes.

“You,” he says. There is little else he can say.

“Oh,” she says. He takes her arm, almost needing it to stay standing; he is weak at the knees with wanting her like this. He raises a hand to her face, trying to remember that he promised her he would not push, would not ask for anything, he runs it through her hair still remembering, holds the back of her head in one hand and her hands are against his chest; he knows she must feel his heartbeat, feel everything and she does not move away. He no longer cares that people can see them, he cannot care past this all-consuming ache, this need he has to say it now, it is impossible –

“I love you,” he says and the second in which all he feels is her breath against his jaw is unspeakable and awful and then she says –

“Yes,” and she is the one to kiss him. There is scattered applause from some of the tables behind them, frowns from elsewhere he is sure. He does not care, he is not here, he is flying and she is his wings. He does not look up from her for a lifetime when someone shouts –

“Get a room!” and he looks around and it is Aramis and he gives him the finger and looks back at her and she smiles and –

“That doesn’t sound like such a bad idea,” she says.

“Yours or mine?” he can barely speak, though he is no longer surprised by this but then she whispers –

“Whichever is closer,” and he is surprised into a laugh, and he takes her hand and she squeezes and they run.

__x__

 **Heeeee guess what’s happening in the next chapter?** **J** **J** **J**


	7. Chapter 7

 

**7.**

His door turns out to be the closest by several metres. By the time they reach it, those metres seem to him of the utmost and unsurpassable importance. He is not quite sure how he ever found his way home, except that she was there and he could not do anything other than follow her, her hand in his through the underground, her eyes alternately dancing away from him and unable to look away. He is not sure he has ever looked into her eyes for so long, he was not sure he could have been allowed. All of this would feel like a dream but a dream has never felt to physical, so thick and rich with sensation. He feels as though it would take very little for him to break into thousands of tiny pieces. His hand shakes on the key to his door; in the end she has to do it, smiling at him, half amused, half understanding. For a moment after he steps through she lingers outside his door and when he extends his hand, she takes it as though for a dance and steps through. It is curiously formal, ritualistic. He supposes he should have asked her in- if he had been capable of words. It does not matter. She kicks the door shut behind her and is in his arms again. He cannot hold her close enough, it feels now more than ever that he could never be close to her enough; the more he has the more he wants- she is always like this for him, his hands are in her hair and he can feel her clinging back, one hand on his arm the other around the back of his neck, kissing her as though he will die if he does not. It is not enough.

“I want –” he swallows.

“Yes –” she says and then, destroying him – “Use your words”.

He remembers all the times she has said this before, though her breath was never against his face like this, her body was never soft and flowing and pushing against him, like a river, silk water and ferocious impact. _Use your words_ she said, so many times, controlling him, needing it that way, he realises, and though it is not as it was with Milady he knows he has to give her this for all he wants and it is easy, delicious even to place all the control into her hands.

“What do you want?” she says, her lips curved against his face – “Tell me.”

“Everything,” he breathes in a rush, the relief of confession acute – “I want everything.”

She smiles into his cheek and takes his hand, leads him to his own bedroom, and he follows helplessly. His fingers hover on her cheek and she waits, but he can feel her body close to his, less patient than he is, less controlled than perhaps she would like, arching towards him, his hand on her shoulder, fitting there perfectly as it slides and fits against every curve and angle of her body. He toys with the strap of her dress, the zip at the back of her neck.

“Can I –” he whispers, heart racing at his daring to ask – “Can I touch you? Really?”

“Hmm,” she bites her lip and it is not a tease, her eyes show no expectation of his requesting it; in fact they glitter, slightly damp as though nobody has ever asked her this before – “Yes,” she nods, her hand curling with intent around the side of his neck – “Yes please, I think you must”. He is not sure if he must for his sake or for hers, he cannot at this moment register past the point where she said _please_ to _him._ He slides the strap down her arm, burying his face in her shoulder, kissing her skin like velvet against his face, nuzzling into her, running his hand down her spine as he unzips her and the yellow dress like a sunbeam falls to the floor and pools there.

He can barely look at her, she shines so brightly in his eyes, standing still beneath his kisses with awkward grace, only two scraps of white between him and her nakedness. She looks almost innocent, nothing like he imagined. He had not thought anything could be better than those dreams. There is only one thing he can do; he drops to his knees before her. Only from here can he look at her completely, drink her in, run his hand down her arm to her wrist then back up her body to rest between her breasts, her heartbeat at his fingertips. She undoes her bra and he is relieved, he is not sure just now if he could ever have worked out how. Again his first impulse is to look away, his lowered head falls against her thigh and his head presses against her instinctively, kissing a trail around her hip until he is kissing the soft fabric between her legs and she makes a sound like a whimper and her hand tangles in his hair. The fabric beneath his lips is wet and he can smell the heat of her, the need. Her hands fist in his hair before dropping to his shoulders and she is pulling him back to his feet by the shirt, not looking at him as she starts to undo the buttons and he shivers beneath her fingers, thinking about her skin so soon against his and he asked for everything, he knows, but it seems like it could be too much. He does not deserve this, and she looks at him as she throws down his shirt, her lips slightly parted, breathing deeply, and her hand drops to his cock and he cannot help but jerk, shuddering beneath her touch; he is so hard, so sensitive and it feels as though he has been that way all day. He has been that way all day. He has to fight with all he has not to embarrass himself completely and at this she smiles again, unfastens him and lets him work the rest out as she lies herself back in his bed and reaches out a hand.

He stumbles, falls by her side and she rolls over to take his face as he reaches to kiss her, lying like this, face to face. His hand curls circles around her hip, he can feel her breasts so soft against his chest he can barely breathe for it; he cannot believe he is allowed to touch but cannot stop his hands anyway, no longer shaking but urgent on her skin. She rolls onto her back, pulling him by the arm, taking him with her. His cock is aching now in agony, needing to be inside her but her watches her face almost continually for signs that he is allowed this. Her eyes are dark and demanding but there is certain nervousness in the corner of her mouth that makes him hold back as much as he can. He stills himself enough to ask –

“We don’t have –”getting no further before she pulls him closer, a ripple of creases like a wave frowning their way across her forehead as though she is confused by her own feelings but ultimately knows what she wants.

“No,” she says – “Please – I want –”

It is enough. He kisses her again, his hand dragging desperately at the last of any fabric between them and her legs are parting for him, one curling around his back, pulling him in, and she is so ready and he sinks inside her, a flood of groans spilling from him at the feel of it, the liquid parting of her body, the warm heat of her, the heat of knowing that it is _her_ and how long he has wanted this. He is frightened by how good it feels to be inside her finally, how right this is, that part of his brain that cries nonsensically _yes this, I remember_ and it does not matter that it makes no sense, her arms are around his neck and her breath shudders out against his throat and he cannot think any more and does not need to, driving into her in a movement he could not possibly control, a blissful, fluid, frantic pace that he cannot hold for long, shuddering in mere minutes, unable to hold back, spilling into her with a shout he cannot restrain and falling onto his back so as not to crush her, lying, head spinning, blood in his ears hearing nothing but his heartbeat for the few moments she allows before her hands are on him insistently. He turns his head and her eyes – her eyes so close and so open to him he has to blink for beauty, for how much she gives away in her unguarded eyes, her nervousness and the urgency propelling her to demand anyway –

“Do you mind?”

And he smiles and remembers not to be so selfish, and she guides his hand between her legs. He never thought to do this before. He does not know how he knows how to please her, only that he has always wanted to. She is wet and silky soft and her body is straining and hard, pushing into his touch, seeking her own pleasure and, with his brain still whirling he wants nothing more than to give it to her. Their eyes lock for a long time until hers squeeze closed and she is shaking beneath his hands, her fingers digging painfully into his shoulder as she screams, cries containing as much surprise as abandon. He is painfully hard again by the time she falls loose into the bed and against him and when he enters her again it is lazy and unrushed and he takes his time, his hand between them bringing her to a second climax so soon after the first that she is almost crying with it, and they cling to each other, shaking together through the waves and he rush of it.

He holds her gently against his chest but her face is buried in hard. He realises after some moments that her skin is wet where her face is pressed in. He strokes her shoulder lightly, a question –

“Are you – alright?”

She looks up at him slowly, blinking. Her eyes are full, her blinking sends tears slipping down her face. They are wide and positively huge, a child’s eyes.

“I didn’t know –” she says and it comes out in a mystified whisper he has to strain to hear. When she tries again it is a little louder – “I didn’t know it could be like that”.

Her eyes search his face as though she wants him to explain it to her but he cannot. He had not known either, though he suspects his reasons are different. Her voice is cracked and young and startled and he is not sure how he can feel such wanting for her and a want to protect her all at once, a fierce urge to keep her safe that he knows comes too late for her somehow. He wonders what he can do, should do. He is still wondering when she says something else, something that rocks through him even harder –

“I love you,” she says. He had thought her eyes frightened before but there is true terror in them when she says this and disbelief as though she cannot believe it is her own lips, her own tongue, forming these words, her mouth pulls at the end of them as though figuring out an unfamiliar taste.

“I love you,” he says. “I’ve loved you since I first saw you.” He wonders how long he has known this really, but –

“I know,” she says and of course she does, she always has. Her fingers play around her lips as though she is trying to puzzle out how these words have come from her. He moves his arms around her back, clasping her by the shoulder, holding her close and quiet and safe and feeling as though this is all he could ever want, always.

Later she stirs, smiling; she presses him gently, insistently down and rises above him like a goddess, sinking down around his cock and he cannot do anything but gaze at her in adoration and worship, wondering at her. She seems flawless to him like this, not just her skin and her tumbling hair that brushes his chest but the way she bites her lip half shyly under his gaze and that look of constant wonder in her eyes as though the pleasure of the act is entirely new to her, her lips slightly parted, barely able to breathe for the surprise of discovery.

And so the night passes. A glorious haze of sex and stroking and food later when they realise the time and are hungry from activity, and they laugh and eat take away in bed as though it is the naughtiest thing they have yet done  and they do not sleep for some time after. And in the morning he wakes and she is still there, not melted away with the light like he had half thought and feared that she would. He realises that it is a bank holiday Monday and he has nowhere to be and when she wakes she remembers it too, and they look at each other and grin.

__x__

 

**I suppose the question is do we wish the story ended here or not?** **J** **Heh heh. I’m sorry for the delay folks, it’s been one helluva month. Far too much has happened in my life since the start of March not all of it great (sorry life story coming up!) I lost my job and have been fighting against that for weeks whilst applying to everywhere ever for a new one, dealing with all the attendant baggage that job seeking brings with, being incredibly stressed and not able to think nearly well enough to write. On top of which I had to do the long overdue trip abroad  to see family which I’ve been avoiding for hmmm 7 years? All of which combined to make no mental ability for writing at all and hopefully this chapter wasn’t too crummy on account of this! Anyway home now, family done, job situation is slowly coming fixed and brain is returning to something approaching capability so hopefully I don’t keep everyone waiting so long again! Thank you, and sorry for ramble if you totally did not care!** **J**


	8. Chapter 8

**8.**

She fits into his life as though there had always been a space there waiting for her. It feels as though he has missed her all this time and that she has simply slipped back in where she belongs. There is nothing that needs to be moved or changed to fit her into his life; he had been ready and waiting for her all this time. He is not sure if she feels quite the same and she will not be drawn on the subject.

“What happens now?” he asks her that first morning – “What are we – I mean how do we?”

“Shhh Athos,” she stops him. “Don’t question it, just – can we just – be?”

“Yes,” he says, and he looks at her, propped on her elbow in the bed, her flushed cheeks and her tumbled hair – “God yes”.

It is impossible to stop touching her, unbearable even. She gets up, she goes to the kitchen, he is drawn to her like a bug towards a heat that could burn it but he cannot stop his movement towards. He kisses the top of her head as she stands by the kettle, winds his arms around her from behind, feeling her slot into place in his arms and she laughs and wriggles away –

“Stop it I’m making tea, put me down!” He remember that he must and he does but she smiles at him, and kisses his face clumsily – wherever her lips land – before she carries on with tea. She goes across to her flat for a dressing gown so as not to have to get dressed properly and they sit at his table eating breakfast and every time he looks up her eyes are on the move as though she has been watching him and does not want him to know it. They go back to bed. The simple sight of her dress still crumpled on the floor ignites a need he had never thought could burn so hard. He had never stopped to think of what happened next – as though this first night were the pinnacle of heaven and he had never need to look beyond it. But now he sees this delight, this perfection unrolling before him like mist from a glorious view and she is everything he sees.

The first time he goes away from her it feels like stretching a bond that could break, so new and so tender as it is. It tugs at his ribs to be apart from her. From the way she smiles when she kisses him, dressed again with her bag slug over her shoulder he can only imagine she is laughing at his foolishness. He knows he should slow down, be as calm and cool about this as she is, but he finds his face growing hot as his mind constantly slips back into sharp and burning memories of the night before and the things they did. He feels his fingers start to tingle with it, the back of his neck prickle and the need rise in him at the memories with embarrassing strength. The others laugh at his distraction and he cannot blame them.

She meets him from work and he wonders how he got so lucky, ignores the others grinning behind his back as she slips her hand into the arm he offers her as they walk home. She asks him how his day is. It does not matter how his day is. It only matters that she asks. He catches himself smiling because it is so good to hear her ask. He asks her the same thing in return. They go back to his. As the days and soon weeks go on, they always go back to his. Almost without seeing it happen more and more of her things find their way into his flat, touches of her in every room. A corner of the closet becomes hers, her teabags on the kitchen self, books on the arm of the sofa. She arranges flowers in cups when she finds he has no vases and they find their way onto window ledges eventually in every room.

He had not had any idea that the height of happiness could be found in seeing a second toothbrush next to his own above the sink. For some reason this strikes him almost more than anything else. A second toothbrush, a sweet scented soap that he eyes suspiciously but secretly loves the smell of, herbs creeping into the kitchen, ingredients for real meals in the fridge. Often he does not notice for days and he supposes it is because these things are so much _meant_ to be here. _She_ is meant to be here. He thinks about suggesting she simply move in and knows that he would love it but every time he thinks about voicing it something makes him stop and he does not. She never asks him to spend a night at hers though she says she loves her flat, and perhaps it is not knowing why that keeps him from asking her to stay always.

In the end a pattern emerges and she stays five nights a week. He gets her a second key cut so she does not always have to meet him from work and he often comes home to find her stretched out on the sofa or studying at the kitchen table. He never heard of a student who studies as hard as she does. He loves her contentment in simply being around him, her frequent silences in which they do not need to speak, doing what she wants while he lounges in front of the television, rolling her eyes at him when he does it too long or more often coming and joining him after a time, curling in against him with her head on his chest, always eventually condemning his choice of programme and taking charge of the controls. _This,_ he thinks is everything. He wonders how he did not know it before. He strokes her hair with an idleness so sweet that it is hard for it to remain idle for long.

It is the nights they spend apart that are the cause of their first disagreement. On the first Friday morning as she gets dressed to go out she announces –

“I have work tonight”.

He has his back to her and cannot see her expression but it sounds to him as though she is perfectly casual, far too blasé in this announcement as though she is going to work in a café for the evening. It is a shock to him to remember what this means; though he never forgot it, had simply managed not to think about to the point where the reminder makes him freeze for a moment, not looking at her. Every instinct in him screams not to let her but he knows he cannot and something tightens hard in his chest.

“Fine,” he says, though it isn’t, and he cannot keep that from his voice and knows he could have tried harder.

“Fine?” She echoes. He can picture her eyebrow raising; she sounds verging on anger that it could be fine and this angers him in turn when he could have said so much worse.

“Fine,” he says again, voice hard this time, teeth gritted.

“What do you mean _fine?”_

He can feel her staring at him and stubbornly still does not turn round.

“I mean I can’t stop you. Alright. That’s it.” He stares resolutely out of the window, hand curling tightly around the cup with the flowers on the windowsill.

“You can’t but –” her voice rises and then breaks off with a snap – “Oh never mind. Do you want me to come round after?”

He wants her there always. He knows he does not want to spend a night without her – not ever again if he could help it. He imagines Milady in his living room, the stiff shuttered way she moves, her face set so differently from Anne’s. He imagines her smelling of other men and his fingers shred the head of a flower in frustration. He feels his face hot and his chest coldly clenched in fury at the thought.

“No,” he snaps, something ugly rising in his chest, sickening him. He could see himself hating her in that image, hurting her with more than sharp words and he is not sure which of them he hates more for it – “God no,” he adds before he can stop himself. She is silent for so long that he has to turn round. She is staring at him with accusing viciousness and hurt in her eyes and her chin quivers just for a moment. It hardens quickly as he turns, her face turning stubborn and antagonistic.

“I see,” she says frostily, picking up her bag with a savage little jerk – “ _Fine.”_ She spits and stalks out without another word. He opens his mouth to call her back, but it does not come out. A flurry of yellow petals falls onto the white of the windowsill.

All the rest of that day he runs this last exchange over and over, tormenting himself with how he could have made it better. Soon enough he starts wondering if she has in fact left him, never to come back. He never suspected it was something one could be in doubt of. He feels sick when he gets home that evening and finds the place empty. It should have felt more normal, he has been used to this for years, but without her suddenly it feels wrong. Her things are still everywhere. He wonders if he should start gathering them up to return them, reminds himself that she has not necessarily left him, that if she has not this would be a ridiculous over-exaggeration – he wonders if he should leave her some kind of message, but she has not messaged him all day and he refuses to be the one to break the silence. He paces, touching her things with frightened fingers. He sighs deeply and goes to the shop for wine which he drinks too quickly. It is still not enough to stop him smelling her when he goes to bed, burying his face in the pillow that has become hers over the course of the weeks. It seems incredible that it has been so short a time. Finally he sleeps.

She does not come all of Saturday either. He repeats the process, pacing, drinking, arguing with himself, determining to call her or _something_ the next day no matter what, anything to end this terrible state of limbo.

He is glaring, thick headed into a cup of coffee late on Sunday morning when she knocks on his door. He stares at her. She narrows her eyes and makes a _Hmm_ sound in lieu of _hello._

“Good god are you alright? You look terrible. Can I come in?”

“You have a key.”

“Can I come in?”

He steps aside, gesturing, sloping back to the kitchen table while she moves around him, making herself tea in silence.

“I thought you’d left me,” he says finally, after a silence that seems to go on forever. She sighs and sits down opposite, cradling her teacup unnecessarily.

“Yes,” she rolls her eyes “Of course you did. It didn’t occur to you that I would _tell you_ if I had.”

“I thought –” he picks up his cup and puts it down again – “I don’t know what I thought. You didn’t message. Or call – yesterday as well you just –”

“I had work yesterday. I wasn’t going to do any of those things only to have to go through this whole scene with you again when I had to go out in the evening. I won’t. I told you. You’ll just have to –”

“Accept it?” he looks up at her, finally looking her in the eye – “I can’t,” he says. He never thought honesty could be so hard. He takes her hand suddenly, fiercely across the table, covering it with his – “I love you” he says – “I need you. You’re mine.”

She pulls her hand away sharply and stands up, turning her back on him and putting her hands on her hips.

“No,” she says. His heart feels as though it has stopped, like his world is plunging sickeningly through space.

“What do you mean – no?”

“I mean –” she rubs a hand across her mouth roughly, dropping it to land nervously at her throat – “You say you love me. Yes. I know. I might also – it doesn’t matter what I feel. But I’m not _yours._ I’m not anyone’s – I won’t.” She folds her arms across her chest and turns to stare at him in challenge.

“You say that,” he says slowly – “But you do what you do, you let – you belong –” he stops himself from saying _to everyone_ just on time – “You do what you do,” he says again.

“For _money._ Does your boss own you?”

Put like that he feels ridiculous.

“It’s just a job, Athos,” she sighs – “No more than if I serving coffee or selling shoes and distinctly better paid.”

“But –” he groans internally – “Do you have to like it so much?”

“You’d rather I hated it? I’ve been there, thank you, no.” For a moment she looks as though she might cry – “I don’t have to explain myself to you,” she turns to go – “I don’t have to do anything –”

“Wait –” he shoots to his feet, catches her arm before she can make it to the door, holds on to her too tightly. For a moment he does not care if it hurts her, would like to leave bruises on her, fingerprints and teeth marks in her skin, anything to mark her as his. Just for a moment –

“Don’t,” he says and she says the same thing simultaneously, scrambling in his grip to shake him off. He relaxes his hold, cannot do this, makes it possible for her to go if she has to. For a moment she stares at him poised between flight and capture. He is not sure which of them moves first only that all of a sudden he is kissing her and she is kissing him and his hold is fiercer than it was before, his kiss gone savage and she is meeting it and whatever else may be between them this at least feels right, just this, her heartbeat audible against his chest and his need for her burning him. He tries to touch her everywhere at once and the first word he breathes is her name.

Her name brings him back. He breaks off, not letting go but not holding onto her as tight, staring at her lost and needing, frightened of her, of himself, of the lust for her turning his head and twisting his heart.

“I’m sorry,” he drops his head; her hand runs through his hair, comforting – “I’m sorry. Help me. What can I do?”

She pulls him closer, warm, forgiving, her hold tender but her breath against his face wicked and when she whispers in his ear it sends a shockwave through his body that makes it hard to stay standing –

_“Get on your knees”._

__x__


	9. Chapter 9

**9.**

“What are you looking at?” she shifts in the bed, smiling at him, soft and sleepy, eyes drooping peacefully. He feels like he could lie like this the rest of the night just looking at her, stroking her arm and running wandering fingertips over her face.

“You,” he says, always simple – “I don’t deserve you.” He feels it deeply, almost unable to believe he is allowed this gentle, reverential touching, let alone the half night he has spent inside her, never able to get quite enough, not always able to stay as reverential as he feels now, too in love, too in need, too obsessed. He knows he should try and control it but it is a vague faraway knowledge with no bearing on his abilities. This time they have feels like a gift, so much so that at times he feels himself deeply afraid of his happiness, of all of this. It is almost too much.

The summer has passed in what feels, going into September, like an exquisite dream. When he looks back all he can see is her, her eyes, her smile, her frowns, the way she walks and stands and moves her hands, the sounds she makes. The only shadow on it all has been the Friday and Saturday nights he has spent alone staring down the neck of a bottle darkly and in the last couple of months even they have lessened. He has sometimes come home on a Friday evening to find her there, blinked in surprise and thought carefully before asking her if she does not have work that night.

“Not tonight,” she says, and it is all she will ever say. He does not question further, just as they never talk about her work at all times.

The summer has piled up memories like beautiful ornaments that he thinks he can only treasure for the rest of his life. She blossoms in the sunshine and green spaces and they go to the park most weekends if they do not get a train out of town. They spend weekends by the sea, adventuring in the lakes and riding in the Peak district. She is such a delight on a horse that it almost distresses him to see. He loves the way her eyes widen at every new place and thing she has not seen, loves catching those seconds in which she lets her face be unguarded, smiling with innocent joy at the new things she will pretend minutes later are not new to her at all. She has a quick tendency towards dissembling that worries him at times and so he ignores it and pretends to himself that he understands her more than sometimes fears he does.

Simple days and evenings spent at home pile up around him in a dragon’s hoard of glittering memories and a wash of sensation that makes him shake to think about. She has a knack for sensing when he might become angry or troubled, by work or by her and these are the times she brings him to his knees, running words around him like she did from the start, Milady in his bedroom and Anne in the moments after. He remembers the first time she dropped to her knees before him, forbade him to speak and took him in her mouth. It was not until after perhaps three months. He had never suggested it, never dared point her towards anything he suspected she might be uncomfortable with, though at the same time he knew he was too much of a coward to ask her the reasons for being uncomfortable with so much. As soon as he began to believe he might know he backed away, not wanting to know. But she did it that night without any preamble. He was hooked on her eyes, looking up at him all the while, asserting her control, never letting him look away from her face, her eyes glittering, hiding what he thought for a moment was uncertainty but knew he had to be wrong. She was so good, so perfect he knew if he thought too much it would make him angry but it was impossible to think with her mouth on him, impossible to go anywhere but where she led him then to love her and return the favour, falling delightedly between her thighs where he could have stayed forever.

There are some moments, months and seasons that do not impress themselves at the time with the knowledge of their importance and only later do you realise that you have collected them like photos in an album to look back on in a quiet place in the mind where everything will always be that beautiful. This summer has not been quite like that, he has known throughout how much he will treasure this (when it is gone), the happiness imprinting itself into memory continually as the days have flown by. It has felt both as though it must last forever and most certainly that it cannot.

And it does not. Late in September it all comes crashing down as a part of him he had not listened to had known that it must.

It comes on a Wednesday with a visit from the area leader, a man Athos has never particularly liked personally but always forced himself to respect all the same out of duty. Louis is young and new to the role; rumours are he only got to be there through his connections on the force to begin with. Luckily the day to day habit is to report to officer Treville and as such they see little of Louis except on visits like these; visits. on the whole, which consist of little more than Louis nodding vaguely at the work in progress and proceeding to brag about his latest exploits and conquests, brags that leave them all more concerned for his wife than anything else.

“Sometimes,” Aramis swears – “I think I’d marry that poor girl myself just to see her not be with him.”

“You’d marry a girl for a sandwich,” someone will reply and Louis’ visit will be forgotten as quickly as he leaves.

This Wednesday Athos arrives at the office late, having worked – or so he has put it – from home that morning, and the day being quiet. When he gets in it is to the sight of Louis perched on the edge of his desk with his feet on Athos’s chair.

“Yes I happen to be a friend of the owner’s,” he is saying, the others looking at him with polite faint smiles and glazed boredom in their eyes – “Armand, the Cardinal himself!” he laughs at his own weak joke. Nobody else joins in.

“Oh sorry is this your desk?” Louis turns slightly, jumping down as Athos comes in. Athos says nothing, sliding into his seat and trying to ignore the man.

“Turns out we all here frequent the same club Athos – you know _Cardinal Sins_ on Regent street? I must say Armand should be proud of his whores, best group of girls I ever met.”

“They’re not –” Porthos begins, Aramis hushes him silently before he can spring forward.

“And this one I’ve been seeing every Friday –” Louis bounds on blithely regardless – “Honestly the things she can do with just her voice let alone her mouth – what?” It suddenly occurs to him how strangely the other men are looking at him and nobody speaks in the frosty pause except, to everyone’s surprise Athos who very calmly, barely raising his head, says –

“What’s her name?”

Louis blinks and shrugs –

“Milady de Winter,” he says brightly – “Why?”

When nobody replies he shrugs again. “Anyway –” he breathes and carries on about something else, the others watching Athos carefully, but Athos gives nothing, hunching hard over his desk and to all appearances writing furiously until Louis thankfully leaves. He does not speak to any of them for the rest of the day and they exchange awkward glances, none of them daring to speak to him. He leaves early and it is D’Artagnan in the end who runs after him, stopping him in the hallway with a hand on his shoulder –

“Athos –“ his face makes a journey that under other circumstances might have been ridiculously comical – “Athos don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“Stupid,” Athos echoes flatly, not looking at him.

“Don’t do something you’ll regret?”

Uncertainty as to what he would do himself makes it come out as a question rather than a suggestion. Athos stares at him blankly for a moment.

“Thank you for the advice,” he says in the same tone before turning and walking out.

She is already there when he gets back, sat at the kitchen table with tea and papers spread out before her, sucking on the end of her pen in a gesture that usually distracts him far more than he would like _(the things she can do with just her voice let alone her mouth)_ and she turns as the door opens as she has come to always do with a smile to see him that seems to go all the way to her eyes. _Seems_ to. She is good, he remembers, so very good at what she does. Today it fades in an instant. He has lived for her smile these past months.

“What’s the matter?” she asks, eyes narrowing, retreating away from the openness she offered him as fast as if she were in a war. He does not know how else to say it than how it is to him –

“You’re sleeping with my boss.”

She gathers her papers to her almost protectively, like a shield, takes a long last drink of her tea and looks at him, mercilessly callously half shrugging.

“Possibly,” she nods – “Who’s your boss?”

His fists clench convulsively at her tone, her eyes flicker briefly to his hands as they clench and he can feel her shuttering off faster, falling away from him without even moving. He tells her. Offers up a brief terse description.

“Oh,” she says, and nods – “Yes I suppose so. Though _sleeping with_ is a strange term in these circumstances, don’t you think?”

For a brief terrible moment he is aware of how easily he could slap her for her coolness. He stares at her furiously and she simply stares back, chin jutting out defensively.

“Every Friday night,” he can hardly get the words out from between clenched teeth – “My slot?”

“I told you I would have to find someone to fill it,” she shrugs – “Trust me, I’ve had worse.”

She stands up, pushes the chair in, puts her cup in the sink and gathers up her things – “To be honest,” she says – “I don’t see why you’re being so weird about it.”

“Weird?”

“Athos, you know what I do. You always have. Whether or not you wanted to talk about it is your own business. Since you’ve seemed to want to steer away from it that’s fine with me. It’s just a job, it’s not who I am.”

“Who you are,” he echoes, a hiss coming into his voice – “I don’t know who you are. A liar and a cheat who’ll do anything to make men think whatever it takes to pay you.” He is shocked to hear himself speak, though he knows on hearing the words, however ugly they are, that they have been somewhere in him all this time. She looks shocked for a moment and then blinks the expression away, fixes a new mask, cooler and paler than the last.

“I never lied to you Athos, not once.”

“It’s your _job_ to lie to people. You’re good at it – aren’t you? Why should I be any different?”

“Because it is _just_ a job? Because you signed on for this knowing what I did and who I was? I thought you knew they weren’t the same – I thought you were better than that.”

He shakes his head. He _cannot_ hear her, not when she is right and her words make such a jerk of him.

“A _job,”_ he sneers – “What I do is a job. Shop work is a job, waitressing – you could do that just as easily and not sell yourself to anyone who asks. You could do that and be mine and I wouldn’t have to –”

“Do you think I care?” her lips pull back in  snarl and she is furious suddenly, at least as angry as he is, he is glad of it but also afraid – “Do you think I care what you wouldn’t have to do? I didn’t pursue you, you wanted me. You think I’d be selling myself less working minimum wage and still on the streets? I won’t be poor. Not again. Not for you. Not for anyone –”

“I would never let you –”

“Oh you wouldn’t let me! You’d pay for me is that it! You think I’d be less of a whore if I was only yours?”

“I never called you a whore.”

“You didn’t have to.” She presses her lips together tight, stares him down – “Quite frankly the fact that you feel a need to pat yourself on the back for not saying it out loud is your problem right there. God, you practically get off on thinking you’re better than everyone else – well I’m not here to stroke your ego, I’m here to tell you you’re not –”

He knows he is not, he also knows that he _would_ like to think otherwise, _be_ otherwise. If there was no truth to her words he could not have been so cruel –

“Oh, I’m not?”

“You’re not better than _anyone.”_

“I’m better than you, _Milady,_ ” she has retreated from him so far into herself it is easier to look down on her.

“And there it is,” she nods, almost smug. He could almost kill her, she is still within reach even if she is so far away, he could wring her neck and she could not fight that, not like she can fight his words. He steps towards her and she must see it in his eyes because she throws her head back, giving him her throat –

“Go ahead,” she hisses – “Like you’d be the first.” She scoffs.

“Oh there’s nothing you haven’t done before is there? Nothing you could offer me that you haven’t offered everyone – and you won’t stroke my ego why? Because it’s not a cock?”

Her teeth flash in a snarl. She slaps him. It does not hurt as much as it shocks him.

“I was right,” she says, cold now completely – “You are disgusting. Pathetic and worthless and you _don’t_ deserve me. You don’t even deserve to be on your knees for me. Get off on _that_ if you can.”

She shoves past him out into the corridor. He knows as he sees her go that he should stop her, but he cannot touch her, cannot force her back and he has no words to match hers. This time she does not need to tell him she is leaving. She pauses in the doorway looking at him as he thinks he must be looking at her – from a million miles away. He feels sick with déjà vu of all things, a feeling of _why do we keep doing this_ seeing himself, seeing her too bleeding and broken, snapping in half in front of his eyes. He tries to reach out a hand to her but in sick dreamlike lethargy his limb will not move.

“I thought –” she says and he can hear her voice crack like a little girl’s even through the blood rushing in his ears – “I really thought we –” she presses her lips together tightly and her face crumples in on itself  and she slams the door behind her.

The silence she leaves behind her breaks on him like a storm.

__x__


	10. Chapter 10

**10.**

Mostly she curses herself for the absolute fool she has been. She knew. She knew it right from the moment that the silly possibility had jumped into her head. That it was a fantasy, a little girl notion she was too old for by far, something she had been so damned sure she had put away oh so much longer ago than she should have had to. She had fought against it so hard at first and then – lagging – for as long as she could she had fought on, but not hard enough.

At the same time she is furious for blaming herself, even the little that she does. After everything that has happened, after how hard it has always been not to blame herself for any of it, to fall now, at this, is disgusting.

When she stalks out that door she carries on the stride, head high, down the corridor to her own apartment. Inside she crumples, crying, her back to the door, hugging herself in a tight furious ball of angry hurting energy. She punches the wall, clenches her fists until they do not want to open again, stiff and sore and she cries and rages at the mess of it all. But not for very long. It is she realises, pointless. She makes herself tea – sweet smelling earl grey, dark leaves sprinkled with tiny blue flowers from a fragrant stall in Camden by the lock. She curls her hands around it protectively, staring half hypnotised at the tiny petals and working her mind around to fixing all the blame on him.

He makes it easier for her – easier to blame him at least, if not to hate him entirely which, at the same time, renders almost the whole world harder and herself harder in it. _Well,_ she thinks, _aren’t I used to that by now? Come on._ She shakes herself out of self-pity brusquely.

She does not know what time, but later that night there is a knock at the door. When she goes to it – slowly because it feels just now as though slowly is the only way it is possible to move, wading through a surreal mess of what might have been – she finds a box in front of her door, all of her things from his flat neatly packed in.

She brings the box inside and it all hurts. Hurts that he can package her up and put her out this efficiently. But it does not sting her nearly as much as the note that she finds between two of her books; a fat envelope containing a note and a cheque for £4600 exactly. She frowns, not wanting to understand, not really, but she reads the note all the same, unable to spare herself.

_For services rendered. By my calculations – every Friday night since May 3 rd 2017._

She stares at it for a long time, unable not to, forced to hurt herself with looking. May 3rd. The date of the flower show, the fucking _bastard._ Her teeth clench hard enough to hurt her head, and _I could kill him_ she thinks before she can check the thought. It is not even idle in that moment. She can feel it in detail, almost feel the knife in her hand, grating against his ribs. It feels painfully satisfying and it shocks her that it does. She cannot remember feeling like this for a long time and when the initial vision of bloody vengeance has passed she feels washed out, tired, almost powerless. Briefly she wonders if she had asked for this _(You think I’d be less of a whore if I was only yours?)_ but the hell with that. The hell with him. Nothing she said lets him off. Not for this. She crushed the envelope and all its contents in an angry fist. She is _not_  powerless and she refuses to let herself cry.

And yet. Yet despite everything that has happened to her since she can more or less remember, despite every person and event that has torn a chunk out of her she is not sure she has ever felt quite so cheap, so unfairly used as he has made her feel. She rages that she can have allowed this. She feels the bile rise again – that terrifying, exhilarating urge to kill that leaves her so exhausted, so wrung out. She leaves the box on the floor and goes to bed.

Wrapped up in the softest blanket she owns she thinks of all the things she would like to say to him. In the end the message she clips out to him is a cool one, as though she is arguing payment on transaction that means little –

_I gave you distinctly more than my every Friday._

She does not expect a reply, so when it comes she almost startled by the buzzing of her phone beside her. It comes back almost immediately, the bright light of the phone screen glaring at her under the blankets –

_I gave you everything._

 

 

On the other side of the wall Athos stares at her message for a long time, numb and hollowed out by it all. Mostly his thoughts scurry around like rats desperately trying to seek trails of self-justification. He _has_ to be justified in these actions, he _is_ justified, he must be – _must be._ He was _right,_ he thinks, to be angry, he was right to call her out, he remembers the cold _probably_ she gave him when he accused her – shrugging as though it was nothing. What sort of man would he be if he just let her do whatever she has been doing with his own boss? He _does_ think of her as his, or did, he cannot know any more. He remembers the chill of her slap to the face, his pride smarting, his _self_ stinging, damn her. He hates her. In the deathly quiet without her thoughts rise up like monsters from under the bed. He should have known better. Better than to try and love a whore. He feels sick (but good surely too) for thinking it.

But if he is right, and this is right and all is as it should be now – he wonders why he should feel so wrong. Why he turns his face into the pillow that has been hers and buries his nose in the lingering smell of her. Why his chest feels tight and half stopped. Why the clock is ticking so loudly, why he starts to cry. Only after he has repeated every vicious and biting thing they said to each other does he think about how her eyes lit up when he walked through the door, the way she smiled to see him as though this was going to be another of those long and pleasant nights in each other’s company. It twists at his ribs to think about the night she might have envisioned, where they might have been now if he had not had to act as he did. She might be here, beside him now, smiling at him with her head rested on her hand, that almost awkward smile she had when she was sleepy and happy, the way she stretched and yawned when comfortable, all those little gestures that could not have contained any kind of a lie.

Except they could. Couldn’t they? He reminds himself how good she is at lying to men. She is paid to make them believe what they want, why should he ever have been any different. He does not want to think about her faking _everything_ these past few months but he forces himself to entertain the notion that this is exactly what she has been doing. The fact that this logic does not ring true just prompts him to seek out more and more reasons why it could be. He remembers her saying she had thought about it, even when he was only a client ( _one of many )_ he reminds himself. He remembers her saying she wouldn’t be poor again, _not for anyone._ He does not doubt for a moment that she would do anything or anyone to make that true. He wonders if after all, her moving into the same apartment block from him, was coincidence after all. He poisons himself with wondering. 

And why, he asks himself, does he do this? He had always known what she did but he had buried his head in the sand whenever he tried to think about it too much. He had told her, after all, that he could deal. He had lied. A part of him knows he has lied to her even more completely than she has to him. He had all but promised her he would not let it touch him. He knows now he had been banking entirely on it not being forced in his face. Once the images began to take hold they had blocked him from everything else and he could not and cannot bear the thought of sharing her, even though he can _hear_ her reminding him she is not his to share – she _is._ Really, he knows he has always thought of her as his.

He realises he had built up an image of Anne as someone separate from Milady. She was the girl across the hall, the girl with paper flowers, the girl who smiled when she saw him and made pancakes in the kitchen in one of his shirts that went down to her knees. His girl with the wicked green eyes that lured him into bed and then the sweet innocence beneath that can only have been an act. This girl could never have said the things she said or do the things she has done and continues to do. This is the picture. That it is one he has painted and not her has not stopped him from putting too much faith in it, nor blaming her when the paintwork cracks.

 

 

 

 

In the days and weeks that follow several things happen. New habits begin to form, new patterns. Obsession, it seems, is an energy that cannot be destroyed, it can only be channelled elsewhere. First of course, he starts to drink. It is frighteningly inevitable how quickly it begins. He wakes later, she wakes earlier. She starts taking greater pains to be out of the house earlier so as to avoid him on the way out. He suspects her of this and starts leaving earlier too, still half drunk or not. She starts getting up at five to be out of the house for six. She spends hours in the library before class and then she spends hours on the library steps when she starts arriving before it even opens. The days get colder, the steps less pleasant. She does not care. She works later hours at the club to avoid him catching her on the way in, he realises this and is more angry about it than anything else. She suspects this too and starts working an extra night a week.

He makes pacts with himself to stop. She tells herself strictly that she does not care, that she will not and is not altering her movements out of anything to do with him. She contemplates moving to another part of London; she determines that there is no way in hell she will move on account of him. He considers leaving, going home to Kent or taking up d’Artagnan’s offer to flat share with him for a while if it would make life easier. He does not want to make his life easier and he will be damned if he moves on her account when he has been here longer. Every other day he tells himself he will stop seeking contact with her and every other day he finds his treacherous feet walking him to her door, stopping there, wondering what he wants to say to her, not knowing and walking away again. Every other day she hears his footsteps, waiting by the door in the end, not even knowing if she would open to him or not. Almost every other day he sends her the same text, regretting it the instant after –

_We need to talk._

Every time she sends back the same message –

_We have nothing to talk about._

Eventually she adds to this –

_We have nothing to talk about. If you message me again I will file a harassment charge._

The next time he texts her number is no longer in use. He changes his number too, but it has nothing to do with her.

Finally one evening in late October the wine has run out and he is on his way back from the store with supplies, she swishes past him in the hall in the hooded cloak that can only mean work. She does not even see him. Somehow he is fast enough, somehow he grabs her by the arm and jerks her to a standstill, the hood falling back from her face. For a long, long moment he simply stares at her, drinking in every feature he has missed, concocting her so many times in his mind that it is a shock to find her more beautiful even than those fevered imaginings. By the time she even snaps –

“Let go of me!”

There is a small bladed knife in her hand. He did not even see where she pulled it from. She glances down, surprised at herself for a moment, something in her biting as she realises some reflexes will never die.

“That’s –” he blinks, less shocked than he supposes he should be, or less surprised – “That’s illegal.”

“Report me” she snaps back “Hell file the damn complaint yourself. Then explain why you were grabbing your neighbour in a hallway. See if I care.” Her eyes flash so bright, so sharp he half expects them to throw sparks. Still she stuffs the knife back into a pocket almost guiltily, as though they could both pretend that never happened. He is frightened by how easily he could have slapped her, frightened too to feel her chest heave and her breathe against him, shocked that he can hate her and want her both completely and simultaneously.

“Why won’t you answer any of my messages? Why do you never answer the door?”

“Had you messaged?” she tosses her head, her words cool – “I hadn’t noticed. Knock harder next time. I imagine I was busy.”

“Liar,” he tightens his grip on her arm, half pushing her with the force of it.

“Sing me a new one,” she sneers.

She twists and breaks his grip, prying his thumb away from her arm and almost jumping back, breathing heavily, her arm hurting where he held it, but not much. She frowns, crumpling her face and rubbing it as though it hurts more than it does. It works, fresh guilt washing over him quicker than he could down another bottle.

“Ask me again why I don’t want to see you,” she spits.

“Anne –” he steps towards her, hand held out to her, palm up, helpless, breaking again. She stares at him, blinks once slowly. When she stares at him again he does not need her to say what she says to know the truth of it but she says it all the same –

“It’s _Milady,”_ she says tightly, lips tight, feeling as though the hurt of it will leap out from her pores in knives and cut him. Instead she just feels herself vibrate with it.

“I’ll warn you just once, Athos,” she says icily “If you care about me at all you’ll stay away from me and if you don’t –” her hand slides into her pocket tightening around the knife they both know now she keeps there – “You’ll stay away from me.”

She pulls her hood back up and sweeps past him. He finds himself stumbling through his door, opening a bottle fast to warm any small part of the ice she trails in her wake.

__X__

 

**Can I apologise enough? I realise looking back that it’s been over a month but I do have excuses – family were visiting and then the lovely _Charis_ and then it was a month and I’d written nothing apart from a few notes while at work. Oops. But anyway – never doubt I _will_ be continuing this and finishing too I just have no idea how long it’ll be! Hopefully and not likely to be that long again though ** **J**


	11. Chapter 11

 

**Trigger warnings this chapter for quite a lot of discussion of rape culture, prostitution and prejudice towards sex workers.**

**11.**

Somehow, slowly, September slips sickly into October, dragging them along with it as the seasons fade but nothing else. _All the bright precious things fade away_ she said, but as usual, he thinks bitterly, she was wrong – nothing has faded for him, if anything the memories have become painfully brighter; shining mocking dreams that, unreal as they seem, still feel more real than his current dull existence.

He no longer tries to talk to her, no longer wanders the halls in hopes of seeing her. When they do pass in the corridor or on the stairs they do not speak, or even dare make eye contact. He wonders if she feels it the way he does. If her skin is tight and tingling with their proximity at these times, or if she has entirely sloughed him off like an old identity she no longer needs or wants to hold onto. On the one occasion they find themselves entering the building together, he holds the door and she watches him out of the corner of her eye as she goes through but still says nothing.

One day late in October he _does_ speak to her. He cannot help himself. He almost runs into her in the corridor, and as he makes to slide away, to pretend as they do that they have not seen each other, he notices an ugly set of bruises discolouring her throat

“What happened?” he asks, shocked into speech, his first insane thought – that one of his more terrible nightmares has come true and he has somehow done this without knowing it. At the same time he is rocked with a wave of fury that anyone would dare to hurt her – a fury he cannot understand and which – he tells himself – is frankly ridiculous even.

“Nothing,” she says quickly, startled, her eyes meeting his for just a split second before she looks away again, trying to cover the obvious lie.

“Nothing happened,” she says again, simply cementing it as untrue before she walks on past him, briskly pulling up the brim of her coat.

He is wracked with horror that night, drinking until he passes out; imagining what might have happened, realising that whatever it was there would be nothing she could do about it- not if it was (hah! The phrase springs to mind incongruously sharply,) _a work related accident._ His horror slides rapidly into utter self-disgust as he realises the dangers of her job had never occurred to him in all the time he had seen her, been with her, in all the hours he had spent hating what she did because of how it impacted on _him._ He had never thought of the danger to her. And he remembers at that first date, her telling him _you’re safe – a lot of girls would pay for that._ He wonders if she has always known the danger and disregarded it – and if so was it because the job was worth it to her or her own safety was not? She is clever, he knows, too clever not to have thought about it, and he never asked her if she was safe back then, not once. He hates himself. He wishes he could kill whoever did it, finds himself the next day outside her door ready to knock, to demand to know who he needs to kill for her. He does not knock.

Whenever he sees her after that she is wearing a scarf or something high at the neck.

He finds himself at work looking into the rights of sex workers in London – he cannot believe his own naivety when he is shocked to find that they have none. He digs deeper, expecting to find a mountain of un-investigated, un-cared for rape claims and sexual assault cases that were discarded because the girl in question had been a sex worker or on the streets. There are not as many as he expects and when he sees how little attention has been given to those there are he understands why there are so few reported. He reads transcripts of interviews – of girls put all but on trial when making their claims, asked what they were doing to provoke it, what they were wearing, drinking, about their sex life, their relationship to the attacker. He talks about it with the others and they shrug it off sadly, agreeing that it’s not good but what can they do. More than anything they seem to be worried about him. He cannot think why, does not make the connections they do.

In mid November he hears about a girl in Bromley South who is attempting and failing to prosecute a couple named Lavesh for running some sort of Auction scheme from their home in the countryside, taking young girls off the street, grooming them and selling them to the highest bidder at exclusive secret parties.

“Why is no-one doing anything about this?” Athos announces, out of next to nowhere, slapping the file down on Aramis’s desk one morning. The others come over, looking at the files, looking at each other with glances over Athos’s shoulder while he isn’t watching.

“Athos –” Aramis sighs gently – “This isn’t our remit – not even slightly. I’m sure the Bromley office are getting on it.”

“They’re not,” Athos says shortly. “This was filed months ago with a note that there’s “Not enough evidence”- why? This girl Camille passed all lie detector tests and there are at least seven other girls willing to back her up – how is that not enough evidence?”

“Probably because Lavesh is running for parliament and this girl is off the streets with no family,” d’Artagnan offers, drifting closer with Constance who has come in that week to help the others with the work Athos has not been doing.

“But that – that shouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

“It does though, doesn’t it?” Constance drums her fingers on the papers, scanning them – “Look, it says Lavesh claims the girls broke into his house and conducted the auction themselves.”

“They conducted their own unwilling slave auction from an estate in the country?” Porthos raises an eyebrow. “That sounds – hard to believe.”

“Which is an understatement,” Aramis nods. Constance shrugs.

“Well a guy on the news last week claims he slipped and fell on a girl who accused him of rape. D’artagnan’s right – it matters.”

“Yes but – he won’t get away with that!”

“It’s done Athos; he’s already been let off. This girl here – she doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Athos is right though,” Porthos frowns – “It’s not right.”

“Yes but –” Aramis gestures excessively – “What are we supposed to do – catch them in the actual act?”

“Actually –” d’Artagnan grins and looks over at Athos – “That doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.”

“Oh no!” Constance groans, and it is this that makes them all realise that whatever d’Artagnan is planning is going to happen – “Oh no you bloody don’t!”

D’artagnan grins and the plan swings into action. Porthos surprises them all by having ties with the Belgarde estate that enable him to get a foot in the door and after that it is a simple matter for Athos and d’Artagnan to secure themselves a place at Eleanor Lavesh’s next special function evening, armed with hidden cameras and recording devices. After the party is broken up and new group of girls escorted out, the rest, as Aramis, offering up a congratulatory toast says, is just scribbling.

In spite of their victory in this one case, d’Artagnan still finds Athos alone in a corner of the bar that night, leaving the others to pull up a seat.

“Cheer up!” he says, obnoxiously cheery to Athos’s mind, nudging his glass in a humble toast with his own – “We got this! We won!”

“But we won’t win them all.”

“We can’t,” D’Artagnan agreed – “But you told me that when I first joined you. Why is it different now?”

“I think –” Athos says slowly – “There’s always going to be one more to win.”

D’Artagnan looks at him for a long time thoughtfully

“I think –” he says slower still. “That that one – the one you can’t win is yours Athos – and – forgive me for saying so – but I think that’s the one you don’t want to fight.”

Athos grunts but is too far down the bottle to argue.

It is mid December by now and d’Artagnan walks him home through a London lit up like a tree, golden waterfalls of lights streaming down the buildings and his own apartment window a black square in a wall of colours. Even _her_ window is lit up with a delicate string of fairy lights, tasteful, he notices, there but not excessive. Clearly she is doing better than he is. 

“Fuck,” Athos announces leadenly – “I hate this time of year.”

“Yeah, about that –” d’Artagnan screws his face up, wondering how to put this – “What _are_ you doing for Christmas?”

“I am going –” Athos says with all the emphasis of a man with a real plan for the season – “To drink.”

“Yeah, we thought so.” D’Artagnan nodded. “Constance was wondering – we were both wondering – if you wanted to come spend Christmas with us – you can still drink – but you know- with friends.”

Athos thinks about being around the two of them, full of festive cheer and gentle affection that he knows they will keep minimal for his sake though at the same time they will not be able to stop giving each other those glances they do, and he has to control a shudder –

“I would rather –” he stops, thinks about what he is about to say and remembers that d’Artagnan offered kindly and he cannot be that rude – “Thank you but – I would rather be alone.”

“Would you?”

It hurts d’Artagnan to see the lost look in Athos’s eyes as he looks back at him, d’Artagnan’s gaze too clear and honest for Athos to lie to.

“No,” he sighs.

“Just come over for dinner then. Porthos and Aramis will be there – you won’t regret it.”

“Alright.” Athos nods, regretting it already, nodding his farewell and heading up to his room alone, remembering when he gets home that that he should have said thank you.

In the street below, d’Artagnan stands in the light rain looking up until a light comes on in Athos’s window. Just before he turns he sees a movement in the window nearby, the one with the delicate string of fairy lights, the curtains are lit up a pinkish red with the light and they flutter and fall back into place as though someone has been watching them and moved away as he looks up. He shrugs and walks away.

 

 

She turns away from the window, closing up the crack she had left open and sighing as she heads to her bed, soft with blankets and a hot chocolate beside her. She wonders how she can still recognise Athos’s footstep on the pavement, how she knows when he is in and when he is not, why she watches for it, why she cares. So his friends are still his friends, she thinks, of course they are. God knows what version of events he has painted her or what villainess he has made her out to be. Not that it would be hard, she supposes. She feels as though he has one over her now in having somewhere to be Christmas day. She had been feeling superior until now with the window lights. They are the only decoration she has, other than a tree in a  pot in the living room, a necessary school project that was too pretty just to discard. She wonders what happens at a family dinner like that – and _family_ does somehow seem like the right word for them – she can only picture it from films and advertising and imagines she will stay in bed that day until it is over, unsure herself what more to do than the outer display of lights, partly to fool herself, partly to fool Athos.

She wonders how he would feel if he knew. If he suspected at all that she only went to work one night now, though she wore the dress and left in it three nights a week still. If he knew she had tried to leave entirely but that Armand had not allowed it nor let her report the attack. She had actually thought about talking to Athos, despite the conviction that he would not care, actually gone to his door the day after he asked her about the bruises to see if they could talk – it might have been worth it to see Rochefort behind bars at least. Then she had imagined a look of sympathy creeping onto his face, and the disgust had been too much, and she had fled back to her apartment cursing her moment of weakness.

She burrows down into her duvet as outside the snow begins to fall but does not settle.

 

 

Their success with the Lavesh case brings the others more and more to helping Athos with the cases he brings to the office, trailing what are essentially a lot of extra projects behind him like a dog with a stick too big for his face. They no longer try to persuade him not to, and when their work with the Bromley sex trafficking system makes the papers, the extra accolades bestowed on their department make Treville go easy on them too, even helping now and again in an abrupt _you-didn’t-get-this-from-me_ manner.

Somehow their offices become known here and there as a place where young girls might be listened to where they otherwise might not. Constance is allowed to transfer to their branch to work with them on this and all of a sudden early in March, a girl comes to them with a case in their area that demands their full and legitimate attention. What initially just looks like rape and enforced prostitution puts them onto a man called Sarazin, who as Aramis puts it,  appears to be single-handedly styling himself into the role of London’s arch – crime lord. His influence seems to run through the city like rats through the sewers. The first victory they win is in the breaking up of a drug ring in Hampstead, a success which gets them in the papers again, much to Aramis’s delight and Athos’s irritation. He goes home early that day, grumbling about constantly having to talk to press when there is still so much serious work to be done, and he has not been home half an hour before every surface in his apartment starts to overflow with the papers he spreads out, scouring them for anything else that might give him a lead.

He has not been home more than two hours before there is a knock on the door. He gets up from the floor grumbling under his breath, utterly ignorant as to who it could be and ready to tell them how busy he is and to go away but he opens the door and it’s her. _Her!_ His chest sings with it, her name swells up from his chest and into his throat and it is _Anne_ and _Anne_ and _Anne_ and it is all he can think or feel, filling his cluttered head with its song before he remembers that he hates her and he stares at her silently. She holds a rolled up copy of the daily paper in her hand – he knows the damned thing well enough, their faces are all over it.

“We need to talk,” she says.

__x__

 

**There! Said this one’d be up quicker! Incidentally the case Constance mentions of the Billionaire who claimed he slipped and fell on a girl and actually got acquitted of rape charges on these grounds  is completely and unfortunately true. I almost had her mention certain major figures that get all rape charges brought against them absolutely turned over but I restrained myself. I don’t have a soapbox, honest. *Whistles innocently*** **J**


	12. Chapter 12

**12.**

For another long moment he just stares at her until she rolls her eyes and walks straight in. He does not dare to touch her to stop her, but he does not exactly move aside for her either.  At the same time she does not hold back from striding straight in- but she does not quite push straight past him either. Instead she looks around at the mess of papers carpeting the place and raises an eyebrow.

“Well –” she whistles – “You really do need help, don’t you?”

“What are you doing here?” he struggles to find both words and voice and when they come he hates himself for how accusatory he sounds. She looks at him narrowly but refrains from rising to it.

“I came to talk to you,” she says sharply, looking around a second time, taking in more of it, the sheer amount of notes and files, the mess of clothes through the bedroom door on the floor, the empty wine bottles in between everything, rolling on the floor under furniture – “But apparently I’m here to help,” she sighs.

“Help,” he echoes dully and the syllable contains a world of questions – “Don’t touch those,” he adds quickly as she turns to read the nearest file lying open to hand – “That’s classified information.”

“You need my help” she states, neither looking at him nor lifting her eyes from the papers – “You’ll never take down Sarazin and his empire without it – and that’s the best case scenario. Worst case you’ll end up dead.” She shrugs as though she does not care either way. He frowns.

“How do you know about that?” He looks at her suspiciously, she holds up the paper in her hand, taps on the picture of the four of them –

“Nice picture,” she adds blithely – “Of Aramis anyway, I don’t think you were staring at the floor _quite_ hard enough for it to swallow you”. He ignores her –

“No names were mentioned. Or any hint that that was more than a drugs bust. No other details were leaked that might imply there was more to it.”

She smirks. He thinks _damn._

“What do you want, Milady?”

“I told you. We need to talk.”

“I thought we had nothing to talk about.”

“Not that. I can help you. With this case. Can you really afford to pass that up?”

He takes a step towards her, vaguely menacing, wanting her gone, wanting to be closer to her, wanting her to cut the crap, wanting him to cut his own.

“ _How_ can you help?”

“I know things,” she says simply – “Things you’d never get from anyone else. I can help you to catch this man and not die. You already know I know something.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“You don’t have to.”

“Why would you help now?”

“Maybe I have a vested interest in taking a criminal down.”

“In your line of work I find that hard to believe.”

She stiffens even more than she was already tense.

“Fine then. I don’t want to help you. Trust me, I don’t want to be here talking to you any more than you want me here. You don’t know what it took me to come here tonight and I don’t care about making you understand. But believe me when I say I want you to take this man down. I’m doing this for revenge, not for you. Trust that if you can’t trust me.”

“Revenge?” Athos looks at her, trying to read her and failing – “You knew this man?”

“You’re quick.”

“How?”

“I worked for him.”

She picks up a folder and sits down neatly on the side of the sofa, pretending to read it – “Get me some tea”.

He stares at her for a moment speechlessly, not taking the file from her but finding himself walking into the kitchen and putting the kettle on. Even though he was shocked to hear her say it he finds himself somehow not wholly surprised. He has always suspected worse of her than he knew, had always avoided asking her about those parts of her past he had suspected but did not want to hear about, and now here it was, necessary to his work and being offered whether he wanted it or not. His mind races and it is a relief as he makes her tea, remembering how she likes it, as he tries not to think about her perched on the sofa, on the side she always gravitated towards. He stirs the tea, opens a bottle of wine, pours himself some in a mug and re-joins her. She takes the tea and does not thank him.

“In what capacity?” he asks. He sits on the floor, so as not to be in her space, so as, to be lower than her though he does not think it consciously – “Can I –” the question has an interview like quality to it that makes him think of it – “Can I get this recorded?” he moves to his work bag for his recording device.

“No,” she says calmly, then scowls – “Is that _wine?”_

He sighs –

“Do you want some?”

He asks it positively rudely.

“No. And I don’t think you should have any – more – either.”

He swallows half the cup defiantly and stares at her until she drops it and sips her tea.

“You said you worked for this man Sarazin,” he continues, interview voice back on. “In what capacity did you work for him?”

“I was fourteen when he found me,” she says calmly – “I was a thief and a pickpocket. He said he could offer better than the streets could give so I took it. He showed me how to do better, involved me in bigger jobs, introduced me to a wider circle – I chose to learn, to be a part of it, I and dozens others, believe me.”

“And?”

“And what?” she sighs and rolls her eyes –

“Yes I was also his whore. His and whoever else he chose. Happy?”

“And did you choose that too?”

She stares at him until he looks away, goes out, comes back from the kitchen with the rest of the wine.

“The girl who gave testimony tells us she was in love with him. That he forced her into prostitution and some degree of petty thievery until she was attacked by a client, facially disfigured and he abandoned her, only then did she come to us with a statement against him –”

She nods, fingers laced tight beneath her chin –

“May I read it?”

He looks at her for a moment before finding the relevant file and handing it over. She reads it slowly, her face never even flickering, nodding at the end, and placing the file down beside her.

“Yes, this all depressingly familiar.”

He thinks about the details of the girl’s statement and feels quite sick to hear her say this.

“Only, I wasn’t in love with him of course,” she goes on remorselessly, letting out a little snort – “Quite the reverse, really”.

“Of course –” Athos is glad and angry at the wine for allowing him to even talk in equal measures – “How – nice for you.”

“No.” She glares at him in a way that implies even glaring at him is better than he deserves – “It wasn’t.” She taps her fingers on the papers in front of her for a moment – “I can tell you things. But I want to look at everything you have first.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to tell you things you don’t need to know – just enough to find Sarazin and take him down. I didn’t come here to reminisce, Athos, this is not some nostalgia trip down trigger lane for me, this is me telling you what I can so you can do your job here. So I need to look at what you’ve got and know what you know.”

Athos rolls his head around in a long silent groan. He wonders if it’s time for more wine already.

“I should start listing all the reasons I shouldn’t let you help. Why should I even begin to trust you?”

“You’re risking your career with these cases, aren’t you? Get mixed up in this you could be risking your life, but by all means let’s stop and talk about my moral character.”

He snorts –

  
“ _Moral character.”_

She gets up impatiently. Drops the folder from her lap onto the floor.

“Fine,” she says, frustrated. “ _Fine_. Be an idiot. See if I care. Maybe your liver will die before your career anyway.”

She is already at the door when he calls out –

“Wait!” and she pauses, hand half raised to let herself out and he remembers the look in her eyes when he came home to her, the smile in them, the way they glittered with happiness. He remembers the hurt in them the last time she left and how he broke in two letting her go, seeing that hurt. He remembers that broken little girl voice that said _I really thought we –_ he remembers his heart tearing, the months spent regretting. He knows he cannot see her go again.

“Yes?” she does not turn, does not even open her eyes. She remembers how he closed his eyes for fear the first time he asked her on a date and cannot believe her own eyes are closed. She does not want to see, does not want to look at him or around this apartment where they were happy. She feels bound captive by the things he said, the things he did, every way in which he hurt her, betrayed her, let her down. She can feel their last argument thick in this corridor on the verge of walking out again. It does not hurt nearly as much as the memories of happiness, the way he made her feel when he looked at her. No-one had ever looked at her like that, not really; no one had made her feel like he had, made her skin sing and her chest tight with (hope) happiness. He had made her feel like she could have this, feel this, be this person, someone she had barely dared hope she could be. It is this that she cannot forgive more than anything.

“Stay?” he says.

“No,” she says. She closes her eyes, _not_ remembering that first time, about a hundred years ago, when she had slipped into a seat beside him and he had asked her to stay when he meant to say hello. Not remembering how easily and wrongly she as Milady had summed him up and judged that he was not someone who would hurt her. How sweet he had been, how touched she had secretly been at how sweet he had been. No she does not remember that at all.

He licks his dry lips, tasting wine, needing wine –

“Please,” he says and then with difficulty – “I need your help – on this.”

“No,” she says again, and then, “Not here. Box these –” she indicates the paperwork that has all just become mess here – “You come to me with them. We’ll work on this together – if you can.”

“To you?”

“Yes. It’s not far. Just over the hall,” – as though he does not know he thinks, as though they never met before –“We’ll start again at mine.”

“Start –” he swallows, throat dry, voice thick – “Again?”

“On the paperwork, Athos,” she sighs – “Just on the sodding paperwork, alright?”

He is already moving, making a half-hearted attempt to start gathering files together whilst going to the kitchen for the second wine bottle at the same time.

“Leave that,” she calls as she lets herself out – “Don’t forget to knock.”

She leaves, but she does not close the door behind her.

__x__

 

**Woohoo! I seem to have re-joined the world of regular updates! I've started the next chapter and everything :-)**


	13. Chapter 13

 

**13.**

She opens the door to him after about two minutes, though he is sure she is standing there waiting right by the door to do so, leaving him to suffer the long seconds waiting.

“Put it on the coffee table,” she says, nodding between the large box he is carrying and the table in front of her sofa – “Tea?”

He does not say yes, he seriously does _not_ want tea. He needs a drink. He needs a drink _so much._ He suspects that she knows this too. She moves into the kitchen and puts the kettle on all the same. He is left standing in her sitting room, feeling like an idiot. He suspects that everything she does is intentional and that the intention is in fact to leave him feeling like an idiot wherever possible. She suspects that he may feel that way and is happy to leave him feeling it, not about to tell him how uncomfortable she is with the concept of drunk men in her space, especially in her apartment, especially, worst of all, _him._ How threatened and superior she feels all at once. She keeps her back to him, staring fixedly at the kettle on the stove. She likes the aesthetic of it over the electric kind, even likes that it makes the water take longer to boil, the ritual of it. She even brings out a teapot, carefully keeping her back to him, to all appearances not paying him any attention at all. She is entirely jaggedly aware of where he is and what he is doing at all times and knows when he stops watching her back and starts looking round the flat.

He has thought about what it would like in here so many times. He cannot believe that it is now, under these circumstances, that she has finally let him in. It seems ridiculous to him that he would do so only now that they are no longer anything that might be described as close, when there is nothing between them. _Nothing._ He cannot help but look around in fascination. Her place is lovely and it puts him to shame, all the more since his became such a wreck. He realises that, despite trying so hard, he never could imagine what her own space might look like; he realises that what he was picturing was far more Milady than Anne, though they are both here and more, he realises, of her character that he does not know. It feels nice here, like candlelight without the candles, there are a lot of things she has put around the place- he wishes he could describe it better to himself – things that make it look pretty, tasteful without being expensive, ornaments without it looking cluttered, mostly vases, all kinds of styles, some with flowers some without. Flowers are a theme here, but never so many as to look like too much – _just._ There is a throw over half the sofa and more cushions than anyone needs – he can catch a glimpse of this through the bedroom door too, everything just slightly – he thinks the phrase is “shabby –chic”, something like that, only just shy of a _Home  Sweet Home_ hanger. She likes _things,_ he can tell, but nice ones; her main lounge looks like a picture from a magazine, so artfully is everything draped, her preference for blue only just peeking through everything.  When he thinks this – how carefully the place has been planned out, the intentional artfulness of the lived – in look, _like a picture from a magazine -_ something hits him in the pit of the stomach, an understanding that sucker punches him and makes him breathe an _“Oh!”_ out loud as he thinks of what she said, brief though it was about being on the streets. His eyes sting him and he feels ridiculously as though he is going to cry for her. Something melts in his chest and he feels like more of a jerk than ever. For everything.

“Oh _what?”_ she turns around again, holding two cups of tea. He attempts to have an expression, suspects that he fails.

“Nothing,” he mumbles, looking down – “Your – place is beautiful.”

For a moment – just a brief one her face almost softens, she almost – he can see it – says _thank you._ Instead she plasters on that fake smile and nods brightly –

“The things you can do? You should think about it some time. Take your tea.”

“I don’t wan –”

“Take it.”

“Yes Milady,” he mumbles, and sits down when she gestures, and she smirks at him though it comes out more of a snort. She gestures for him to take the beanbag, which he pulls up to the coffee table while she takes over the chair and pulls the box towards her. He watches her for a moment, uncertain what to do.

“You do realise –” he finally says, slowly – trying not to say anything rude or mean for once – “You do realise how much trouble I could get into if anyone knew I was letting you look at this?”

“Yes,” she shrugs. “I realise.”

“I understand,” he says, bitterly _you just don’t care_ – it is evident in her voice she does not.

“I doubt it,” she says, voice cheerful, light, the tone another lie. She does not look up at him for another ten minutes.

“This is going to take me a while,” she says finally. “You may as well carry on with whichever ones you were looking at before I came in.”

He is not sure he can relax enough to think to do that around her- he is frightened by how much he has needed the alcohol to think lately. He is frightened by what he can sense threatening to happen to him just from sitting in the same room as her, frightened that every minute in her company just drives it home to him clearer and clearer what a mistake he made, what an incredible jerk he was to her. He wonders how he can talk sense to her when all he wants to do – and cannot do – is apologise. For everything. God, he needs a drink.

“You’re not getting one,” she says calmly, still reading, hand against her cheek, startling him with her prescience.

“I need –”

“No you don’t.”

He cannot control his angry, needy breathing becoming audible.

“For god’s sake Athos,” she snaps, impatient – “It’s been what? Six months? You used to function fine without a bottle in your hand.”

“That was before –” he stops; she is raising an eyebrow at him in a way that dares him to continue, to blame her – “You didn’t want to talk about us,” he mutters sullenly. She rolls her eyes –

“No I didn’t.” She nods nastily.

“Can we just _not?”_ he groans.

“Fine by me. This girl – Celine – she safe now?”

“What do you mean?”

“She turned evidence against someone she knew was a threat to her. She’s, what did it say here – seventeen? I trust she’s being looked after?”

“She had no family that we could find. She’s been placed back into the system, yes.”

He frowns, not understanding the way her face twitches, her lips thin and her eyes close for a long moment. She gets up and walks out the room, for a pained and swollen moment all he can hear are the muffled sounds of movement in the bathroom . He drinks his cold tea, awkwardly putting it down as she returns. He wants to ask her what’s wrong, what he has said _now_ but cannot find the words, not sure she would welcome it if he did.

“She’s accused Sarazin of sex trafficking, and that’s from personal experience, but hasn’t accused him personally of rape?”

“As I say, she was in love with him. She claims it was consensual.”

“And you’re happy with that are you? She was _thirteen_ when he found her, that’s – younger than I was.” She says this last bit so quietly he only just hears her.

“But you – I mean –” he struggles again, aware that if this is hard for him it can only be worse for her, not even sure if he has a right to feel as though this is hard for him – “You never brought charges against him yourself?”

“I was involved in the other side of the business as well. This girl wasn’t. You can’t be prosecuted for underage prostitution, you know that – thievery now, that’s a different matter.”

“Was it one or the other?”

“I can’t speak for her but –” she sighs, building a wall in her eyes behind which he can see nothing and she can stop herself from feeling –

“I was _good_ at thievery, infiltration, the larger jobs. I made myself be. With Sarazin you have to pay the rent one way or the other. It didn’t always get me out of the other but enough. It was worth it.”

“I can’t –” she looks at him sharply; he shakes his head, mind racing – “I can’t take anything you say about the thievery as evidence without implicating you.”

“Careful Athos, that’s almost considerate of you. It might not matter. A lot of Sarazin’s men liked to – shall we say, multi-task – and you’ve taken some in after this, haven’t you?” She waves the newspaper again.

“That was only two days ago. We haven’t had a chance to question them yet.”

“Well come back to me with transcripts when you do. Ask them about the burglaries as well.”

He nods for a moment and then groans.

“What?”

“How do I tell anyone how I even know about that?”

“There you see? _How do you know about that?_ Should at least prove some of your men here guilty. Just tell your little friends down the office you have an anonymous source – works all the time.”  


“In _movies._ Besides isn’t it an easy guess? They’d confess quicker if I threw details at them and we don’t have any.”

“I do.” She shrugs. “They’re from six years ago but I’m sure some of the same crew are still around, start with 19 Covent Garden, 18th June 2011- that one was huge- then there was 61 Grenville Street, 21st November 2000 – I do hope you’re getting this down.”

He stops staring at her and starts scribbling.

“Can I ask –” he begins when she stops.

“No,” she says – “Why? Are you wondering why you ever trusted me in your apartment?”

“No,” he says, his face falling with sadness and weariness at her defensiveness and mistrust. It begins to occur to him how strange it is that all of this is making him trust her more, not less. He wishes he could say it in a way that would not make her angry – “Anne, I –”

“ _Don’t,”_ she says and it is the fear rather than the sharpness in her voice that makes him stop.

“Do the interviews,” she says “Then come back to me tomorrow, the next day, the rest of the week; you want to work on this we’ll work on it. Get Sarazin’s men and you’ll get him sooner.”

“Come back –” he echoes – “Here?”

“No. Down the office so everyone knows I’m helping you. Yes, here! Anything else?”

“I have to ask –”

“This better be about the case.”

“It’s about the case,” he says wearily – “What more can you tell me to go on now?”

“Be more specific.”  


“Where was Sarazin living last time you knew?”

“A flat above the _Bishop’s Finger_ in Deptford. He owned the whole place. I’m not going back there.”

“I wasn’t asking. The men we caught on the drug’s raid – any of them involved in the sex trafficking?”

“Hmmm. Probably. Certainly they – yes. Yes you might say that. I told you they tended to multi-task.”

“Also – the burglaries we can run over, match to the addresses with the dates, but rape charges are harder to verify – anything down that avenue – that side of the – er –”

“Business?”

“Um. If I can, I want to hit this guy with all charges. I doubt – I mean I don’t mean to and I’m sorry but –”

“They won’t take my word for it? Or this other girl’s? Or a dozen girls with the same story? You don’t have to be sorry about _that_ Athos. There _are_ things that aren’t your fault, you know.”

She rubs her wrist across her forehead wearily – “Actually there might be evidence. But I’ll – have to get back to you on that and you won’t like it.”

“I’ll – leave it with you.”

“Thank you.”

“One more?”

“If you must?”

“Why now? Why invite me here now when you didn’t all the time we – I mean I didn’t mind but –” he stops, realising as he says I that he _did_ mind. Quite a lot.

“That is _not_ about the case.”

“I know – it doesn’t –”

“But I’ll tell you if you answer me something after. Deal?”

He nods worriedly. She nods too, and shocks him with what she says next –

“I didn’t want to let you in,” she says simply – “I never let anyone in here before. This is _my_ place. I only ever had one before, and I wasn’t proud of it. This is the first nice place I ever had.” She folds her arms across her chest, but to his surprise goes on talking – “If you’d told me when I was fourteen that one day I’d have somewhere like this, on my own, unbothered – well _mostly_ unbothered by men I’d have laughed in your face. I dreamed of something like this too much to share it with anyone. I couldn’t – I suppose I thought that if you saw into my sitting room you’d know me too well, you’d know who I had been and how I got to be where was now – or who - and –” she stands up, he follows her lead as she walks towards the door – “And once upon a time that mattered. Because you would never have stayed with me, not beyond that first date, if you had known about my past. I let you in now because it doesn’t matter. Because now you know. For what it’s worth.”

She shrugs and looks down at nothing stubbornly, unaware how close her head dips towards him as she moves and his heart breaks again. Because _she thinks it doesn’t matter, she thinks she can tell me now because I don’t want to be with her anyway. Because I fucked it up. Because she failed already and I don’t love her anymore. She thinks I don’t love her. Oh god I love her. I –_

He just nods in reply, his head almost touching hers. He does not know he has placed his hand on her shoulder like a drowning man steadying himself, and she has not pushed him off –

“You wanted to know –” he begins. She closes her eyes, looks back up, nods minutely –

“Why _did_ you start drinking like you did?”

He drops his hand from her shoulder and it feels like he is tearing in two. He cannot lie to her, not now –

“Because I cannot find any other way to live in a world without you.” She stares at him, eyes wide, shocked. He cannot look at her –

“I should go.”

“Yes.”

“I’m going.”

“Do.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll ask you another.”

He almost smiles –

“Quid pro quo?” She opens the door, steps aside.

“Very well. Good night Athos.”

As he says it, he feels as though their last conversation has stripped him naked and only now is he shrugging a shirt back on –

“Goodnight, Anne.”

__x__


	14. Chapter 14

 

**14.**

She feels relieved when he is gone and also a strange sadness that in a way makes her feel even more relieved; like she can let out a breath after holding it tight inside the whole time he was there. She is not sure what to think, what to feel. She thinks about her breathing, looking steadily over the room, the papers on the coffee table and the sofa – she realises suddenly that he has left them and wonders if she should take them back to him. She decides he will come back if he needs them. She is not sure if she hopes he does, or hopes he does not.

She feels as though she has been frightened for days. Ever since she saw the article and made up her mind what she was going to do. She did not want to talk to anyone about these things, long convinced – she had thought – that she had them so buried they could not have been dug up. She tries to find herself a less sentimental reason for helping but the truth is the girl’s bravery in coming forward had touched her and the knowledge that she _could_ do something about this, the sick guilt laden knowledge that if she had ever spoken herself Sarazin might not have gone free to extend his fucking empire, to put this girl she had never met in this position, her and doubtless countless others. She thinks about what she told Athos – that she could not have said anything without incriminating herself, and while he seemed to buy it entirely she is not sure that she does herself.

She asks herself why _Athos._ She did not want to talk about this. She did not want to talk about this with _him._ She did not want to talk to him at all. So she wonders why something felt right about seeing him again. Why it felt as though something new was starting, as though they were on the edge of something. She thinks about how much she still has not told him and feels guilty again. The attack at the club. The evidence she nearly told him about and then could not.  She hates this. She never felt guilty when everything in her past had gone unsaid, but now the more she tells him the more she feels she must. She wonders if it is really for the case or for him – worse she wonders if it is not for herself. She does not care about that, does not need to get it off her chest, has always been fine. It is ridiculous. She stomps off to bed impatient with herself.

Lying in bed awake her head, is all confusion. She has not lied to herself in thinking that it was easier to tell him these things now than it might have been before, knowing that he did not love her and judged her anyway, it was easy to let him know what she had done, what she had been – if easy was a word that could be applied to the situation. But she thinks about what he said at the end – that he drank because there was no other way to _live in the world without her._ Not _could not_ he said _cannot_ as though it were still true. Why would he say that if he did not love her, if she was nothing to him, just the whore he had let her believe herself to be? She does not understand it and buries her head under the pillows to yell out loud in frustration.

She asks herself what she wants. Dares to ask herself what she wants beyond a conclusion to this case. Could it be she _wants_ to spend this time with him working on it? Does she _want_ him to know her? Or at least where she comes from, if that does amount to her? She wonders how she can ever make him understand that it is and is not her; that she can be who she is now, who she was with him, the girl she has been telling him about – all of them at once just as she is Anne and Milady, all of them. He will never understand, never believe her or trust her. She wonders if this is what the teenage _nobody understands me!_ phase is like – if she is going through this now but seven years later. After all, she had bigger things to worry about then. At seventeen she had just escaped Sarazin, was starting to work for herself in the years before _Cardinal Sins,_ was only just starting to dare ask herself if she could have a life, be a person, see a future. She is proud of how far she has come since then but wonders if she has not taken herself too far. It was a mistake, dreaming of a life with him, wasn’t it? A mistake to think she deserved to be that happy? She has not let herself think about how happy she was since they split up. Tonight she cannot stop the memory. But how does she tell him she never lied, not really? She really _was_ that person, or at any rate she wanted to be her so badly she might have been if given the chance. How could she tell him the awkwardness, the naivety, the sweet girl – next – door thing was never really an act? She really _hadn’t_ known how to date, how to be with someone like that. She really _hadn’t_ known what sex could be like. She knows he was enchanted with what looked to him like innocence – how she had cried on him that first time, how she had trembled when he touched her – how he could not possibly have understood that she had never come before for anyone, she had not even thought she could like this, that it could feel good, that someone might look at her like he did, touch her like he did, stop at every corner and ask if this was alright like he did. How did she know if it was alright? She had no benchmark, nothing to measure him against, he had seemed to her so different from other men that his condemnation had struck her as a greater betrayal than she could have ever expressed to him. And now? She asks herself wat she wants now. She thinks him missing her, needing to drink so much and almost feels sympathy. She thinks of how he must blame her for that and discards that sympathy fast. She thinks about how awkward this all must be for him, how little he must want to hear what she has to tell him and how clearly she could see him struggling to put his own difficulty aside in the face of hers. She is almost ready to thank him in her heart for it. She thinks about the cheque he sent her and their hasty words _– I never called you a whore – you didn’t have to._ It cannot be that she wants them to be as they were again and yet – feelings pile around her like too many spring buds clustering up one tree and she cannot see the base for all the leaves. She just knows, sinking deeper, relaxing into bed, her skin tingling with memory – she knows she wants to feel that touch again.

 

On the other side of the wall Athos thinks about her condemnation and tries not to drink the second bottle of wine. He drinks the second bottle of wine. He despises himself. He goes to bed. It is all depressingly mundane. He thinks about what he has done. It is not the first time, but it is the first time he has had such knowledge and he knows that however hard he has been on himself about how he acted, it was not hard enough. He knows that she has not told him anything she has to make him feel bad and stranger still he believes everything she has said. He feels bad for even thinking that this is strange. He has treated her unforgivably, and cannot help but think he is a hypocrite and a creep for only just realising this now. Did she have to have suffered already for him to know this? What kind of a man is he? He hates her for highlighting who he really is, hates her for bringing out the worst in him as he must surely have done in her too. She was right when she said he did not deserve her. He fears he never will. His heart aches thinking of everything she has battled already and to know that he has made her life harder in any way -! And he should have known. He should have asked, should have picked up so much better on the clues she gave him. He does not deserve for her to have entrusted him with her testimony, her life. He wishes she had been able to tell him freely when they were together. He wishes he had made it possible for her, that he had not forced her onto a pedestal she must have known he had set her upon and where she felt awkward and unbalanced. He should not have assumed anything, set any ideal upon her, however perfect she seemed to him. He remembers for the first time that he had already fallen in love with Milady before he ever met Anne.

He had loved her just seeing her once a week as her client. He should not have but he had. He had known – he forces himself to be honest with himself – finally, two bottles of wine only just enough to allow it – he had known what she was, what she did. He had made all the worst kind of assumptions about what sort of woman she had to be to do what she did, and he had loved her anyway. But Anne. Anne was so different from all those stupid assumptions that he had seen her as someone else. So he had separated her from Milady, tried to ignore the existence of the first woman he had fallen in love with the more easily to understand the second never realising they could only be the same person. He loves now her now double for understanding. He wonders how he can ever tell her this, how late it would be, how stupid she would think him. He can almost see the condescending rise of her eyebrow already.

He thinks about seeing her tomorrow and who knows how many days after that and wishes he did not feel so excited when the circumstances are so grim. He feels so wrong for wanting her now but all the wrong and confusion in the world cannot stop him and he wants and he wants and he wants.

 

He does go over the next day, and the day after that. On Thursday he asks her if she wants him to come the next day and she shrugs and says yes.

“Don’t you have work?” he asks, simply surprised, not loading the question with anything. She blinks in surprise at the tone of it.

“No,” she says lightly – “Not this week”. She looks away so he does not see her biting her lip, remembering everything she has not told him, how little she goes in these days.

It is becoming almost companionable, he thinks, almost. He comes to her door, she lets him in, she offers tea. He does not let her know about his quick few drinks after work, she does not let him know about the evidence she has not yet discussed, though he suspects she knows about the drink and she suspects he knows there is something she is not telling him. He still does not ask about the roll neck sweaters and scarves. He does not dare, not when they are treading such a delicate path here, dancing on spider webs, trying not to break them.

He sits on the floor in front of the coffee table automatically, she sits on the sofa. On the third day she throws him a cushion. He drinks the tea just because she has made it. When it gets late and he wants to eat but does not want to finish work she seems to sense it and asks if he wants to order in food. It feels dangerous, too familiar, too pleasant, more than he deserves.

“What kind?” he says.

“Pizza,” she replies decidedly – “Or we’ll be here all night” He knows what she means; that if they do not get pizza they’ll argue for nigh on two hours between Indian and Chinese. He remembers. He is not sure what makes this more precarious; the memory or the thought of staying there all night. He feels terrible for the constant low level arousal that plagues him constantly in her presence – all the more considering the case, the memories he knows now it brings up for her, though she speaks of it as little as she can. Ordering food feels harder in terms of the conversation it requires than all of their talk regarding evidence and case detail.

“You order,” she says.

“No you order. You sound better on the phone than me.”

For a brief, breathless moment she grins and he half grins back and a look flashes between them of the number of times they have had this exchange and it hurts and he wonders if it hurts her like it hurts him and she wonders the same and it feels good. She orders and she includes the extra pineapple on his even though he did not mention it and she despises pineapple on pizza. They eat and later it is harder for him to leave than it was the night before.

It gets harder every night, however much they avoid really talking; though every evening before he leaves he asks her something else but never something big like the first night, too happy with what is happening to push. He asks her favourite colour the first night, she asks him his favourite pet. It’s blue, he should have known. She was a dog, her name was Sam. On the second night she asks him his happiest childhood memory, he reaches through holidays and schooldays and comes up with a selection of several. He takes a plunge in his question back and asks her the same. She chews her lips for a while and he regrets the question but finally she nods and starts to tell him about sneaking onto the roof when she was _seven or eight I guess_ she does not say where just –

“We used to go up there a lot. Cause it was cool and cause we could. Cause from the attic room you could get through the skylight and it was easy and you could see so much from up there and the adults couldn’t get to us. We’d go up there alone a lot – when we needed to cry or whatever, sometimes just to sit and be above everything, hear the city as though it was far away and look out over the rooftops, feel the breeze – there was always a breeze. We all snuck up there together that time and watched the fireworks over the river. It was cool up there in the dark. You could balance on a ledge up there, put your arms out and feel like you could step off and fly, fly away from it all and the town all muffled all below. It was nice.”

She smiles as she remembers and nods, her accent slips but her composure stays and she looks up at him after a pause, nods again and says –

“Yeah. Thank you.”

He is not quite sure why.

“Anyway,” she says, half apologetically and they carry on working.

He watches her when she is not watching him, constantly looking away when she looks up. When either of them move he is overwhelmed by awareness of it, hyper charged with the understanding of where she is and where he is, a tight tingling awareness that something is about to happen, is happening, that something has to break, could give at any moment. When he comes closer for them to look at something together his hands tighten around the file, fingers tight when she takes it too, thinking that if their fingers even brushed it would send a scream all the way down to his toes. The more the moments pass like this, the more angry he finds his arousal making him, soon enough convinced that every move she makes is calculated to drive him insane and eventually snapping –

“Stop that?”

“Stop what?”

He is certain she sounds too innocent.

“Stop tapping your foot like that, it’s annoying”.

She always moves her foot like that when she’s reading or otherwise still and studying something and a part of him knows it well enough.

“I’ll do what I want.”

“Don’t you always?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

And a long silence. He watches her sideways, noticing she has been staring at the one page of one folder for far too long.

“I need that folder.”

“I’m busy.”

“You’re a liar.”

“So you do always say.”

“Give me it.”

He stands up, too over wound for the floor, she almost jumps to her feet in retaliation, as though his movement is a threat. Perhaps it is. He grabs the file from her hand, his fingers briefly encircle her wrist but not briefly enough.

“You could have just asked.”

“I did.”

“Not nicely enough.”

“You want me on my knees?”

She smirks. He thinks, _oh fuck._

“Damn it Anne –” he can barely breathe for feeling how close she is, barely ring himself to breathe the same air as her – “Why can’t you just be a – a girl? Why do you have to be a constant bitch?”

“Why won’t you let me be anything else?”

“I hate you.”

“Excellent. I hate you too.”

The folder drops from his hand to the coffee table. His hand is already in her hair, grasping tight by the back of her neck and when he moves to kiss her she is already moving so that he is not sure if she would not have kissed him even if he had not made that move. He kisses her furiously, angrily, desperately, pressing himself against her as though the feel of it can cure an open wound smarting at his chest. He pushes against her so that she knows – as if she had not already – how hard he is, how much he needs her, will always need her like this if there were nothing else between them, how he cannot help but gravitate towards her wherever she is, whoever she is, he can never be close enough ever. This is the only essential truth, everything else is background noise.

She is still too far away, he knows it in the savage press of her against him as she squirms in his arms, pressing closer, trying to wriggle up under his skin. He does not want her under his skin, he wants to be under hers, wants to slide up inside her with everything he has, his fingers sinking into her flesh, his skin fusing with hers, if he could rest his head between her rib cage and kiss her beating heart he might be close enough, until then all else is nonsense. He pushes her down, slides his hands beneath her shirt against her skin, pressing to bruise her, to claim her, to make her as much his own as she can be if touching her could do that. He wants to weep for needing more. But she is pushing at him weakly, as though it is far from what she wants too and gasping out –

“Wait –” and when he does back off a little – and it feels like tearing, cold and painful to do it – she shakes her head and for a split second he is terrified of what he could do, but she just says –

“Not on the coffee table – it’s a fucking antique.”

And she leads him by the hand like she did the very first time in the club, almost pulling him as he stumbles behind her, to the only room of the house he has never before been granted access and he should feel the honour of it, should know he is the only man to have been here, he might have felt it as a blessing at any other time but just now he needs her too violently to care. He wants everything at once, touching, tasting, fighting her, scrambling, almost tearing at her clothes, digging his nails into her back and dragging across the skin and she screams and scratches back with longer nails and her teeth are in his neck and he wants to fight her off but he does not and they go down together in a tangle of limbs, hissing, snarling, scratching, biting and he tells her again how much he hates her because it seems the closest he can come to truth and she hates him, she hates him right back she says and her legs open with it and he shoves up inside her savagely, head spinning with the damned relief and release of it. Her nails tear down his back and she is still fighting him but she’s fighting to get closer just as he is and they are both snarling and spitting, lost in a battle where they both have the same end and it’s to get closer, always closer. Her arms fall over her head and he is staring at her wrists wondering if he can hold her down and he wants to, wants to claim her, hurt her tiny wrists in his fierce hands and she sees him and chokes out _do it_ and he grabs her, slamming her into the mattress, holding her down and pounding feverishly into her and she is screaming his name in a  flood and curses in between and he could never have fucked her like this before, never have dared and it’s _Anne_ that escapes him when he growls into her neck, it can only be _Anne_. She does not stop him. The pain of her teeth and nails is perfect, inciting him to fuck her harder, scratch back, kiss her like he hates her while deep inside her as he can be and it’s _almost_ enough now at least, like this. He can see her hating him as he hates her, burning and brimming in her eyes as she presses up against him her body demanding they stay this close and it feels right and exquisite and he does not care what she is anymore, or who she is to him or to anyone, whatever she is he loves her, though he did not mean to word it as love any more than he meant it when he told her he hated her. He comes snarling, savagely pushing into her, hands in her hair, his skin against her skin and they slide together slippery with sweat and he feels her hands ball into fists beneath his grip and he holds her tight through her shaking, knowing her body instinctively if nothing else, knowing what she wants and needs and does not have to ask him for.

His skin is hot against hers, his breathing in its gasps – he feels as though he could breathe fire and she is pushing him off gently, limply, feeling it too and he lies on his back and she beside him, needing the cool but still needing to hold her hand, her arm against his barely enough but something he needs even to survive just now. It is terrible, turning to face her as everything begins to calm, terrible to experience rational thought again and think _oh fuck_ and wonder what this mean and worst of all the question she asks him as she turns her head and meets his eye and even though it’s hard she does not look away and touches her throat gently with a fingertip seeing the bruises for the first time and so his question, tonight’s question if it can be clashes with hers and he says –

“What happened?”

At the same time she says –

“So what happens now?”

__x__


	15. Chapter 15

**15.**

Their questions clash awkwardly in the still breathing room. She looks away, and he feels a rush of panic seeing her do the thing she does where she is falling away from him, retreating fast, closing herself off.

“No –” he says quickly, touching her face before he can stop himself – “Don’t – don’t go.”

“I wasn’t –” she begins but she catches herself – _yes, yes I was_ and her eyes prick when she thinks _oh, he noticed, nobody ever noticed before._ It occurs to her with a jolt that this should be the first time, how long, how hard and how good she has become at doing this. She wonders if she will ever be able to forget how it started, why she had to. She can see herself persisting in the lie, getting up stiffly, getting back into her clothes in chill defensive silence, returning to the abandoned files and asking him coolly when he plans to leave. It is a brief fight within here but at the end of it she pulls the duvet up over them, curls around to face him, knees drawn up, his hands in hers, touching but not too much and she nods, breathes out, laughs, a little nervously but not wholly –

“Honestly – the best orgasm of my life and I have to _talk?”_ she grins to make it flippant, but he suspects his heart has missed a beat and he cannot help himself – raising an eyebrow and matching the lightness of her tone –

“Really? He half smiles- “The best –”

“Oh, shut up Athos,” she grins – “Now you go first.”

“Me first what?”

“What happens now?”

He blinks rapidly as they grow serious, though it is in awareness now that something has thawed between them –

“I don’t know.”

She bites her lip trying to re-phrase, aware that he cannot know this any more than she does.

“I’ll try to re-phrase – alright – what do you _want_ to happen?”

“I want –” he thinks about everything he wants, he wants her with him, that much is obvious, he wants her his like she was before. He knows he cannot have that. He knows he cannot just say that he wants _her_ however true it is, it is too obvious, too unhelpful. He wants a lot of things he dares not envision. He has to tell the truth now, however impossible –

“I want us,” he says – “I want us to be as we were – but I know we can’t. I _know.”_ He thinks for a long moment and she lets him, barely aware that she has moved in closer. She has never wanted closeness like this before.

“No we can’t,” she says eventually when his struggles leave him silent – “I’m not who you wanted me to be. You know that now. I won’t apologise for it.”

“I don’t want you to,” he says, looks at her steadily, seeing his frightened eyes in hers – “But you’re wrong. I didn’t want you to be anyone you weren’t –”

“That’s not –”

“Listen to me. I didn’t. But I did have an idea of you that I placed somewhere so high I could not even see you, you were – perfection, surrounded by paper flowers. I loved you – as much for that idea as who you were and it was unspeakably unfair of me. I want – yes – I want more than we had before. I want – if I could – to get to know you, really know you and I want to make you happy – though I know I have no right to ask it.”

“I didn’t mean to lie to you,” she says, looking down, staring at the base of his neck where her gaze lands – “I didn’t pretend to be that girl – not really – I could see who you thought I was, you know, it was obvious and I wanted to be her – you have no idea how much – I thought I could be if I could convince you, but I had to cut so much of myself off to do it.”

“I don’t want that.”

“I know that now but I don’t know why.”

“Why?”

“Did I fucking stutter? I don’t know why you’d want to know me – not all of it, not now, not everything. You want me to be beautiful, don’t you? And you don’t want me to lie to you – and I guess – well you can’t have both. Not really.”

“You’re wrong,” he says – “I thought so too – but I don’t love you because you’re beautiful.”

“Oh god, don’t –” she rolls her eyes half laughing.

“But I do – I love you for who you are – even if I don’t know who that is yet. I know more than I did when I loved you before. ” Her face crumples –

“You _do_ ask too much,” she says, thinking hard – “You want too much. There’s so much to work out, so much to talk about, so many things to apologise for – mostly from you. You want me to be yours, I don’t know if I can be. We’d need to talk about work – my work – I mean really talk about it – there’s just so much – so many lies, so many shitty things we’ve both said – so much to unravel – I don’t know – I just don’t know if we can get through it all without –” there is a glitter like dark glass in her eye; he feels her stirring and uncurling, moving against him in a way that stops his heart and stiffens his cock –

“Without what?” he asks hoarsely as her knee pushes ever so gently up against his thigh.

“Without needing to pause for you to fuck me,” she says, and her voice is raw and honeyed all at once and he remembers – remembers it from the dungeon and the touch of her cane and that tightly laced control breaking him down and he groans, feeling it flow through him to hear that voice again with her naked beside him asking him for so much more than Milady would ever have allowed. As her arms drop he pulls her in, hand curling around the back of her neck, hand pulling her into him by the hip.

“I can work with that.”

“Can you now?” her breath is hot against his ear, her hands on him, her breasts against his chest and the grind of her against his hardness, insistent and certain.

“Yes,” he breathes – “Yes, Milady.” He is as shocked to hear the love, the tenderness in those three syllables as she is; for a moment it feels as though he never really worshipped her before, not properly, for a moment he can see it register bright and shiny, flecks of water in her eyes, and her mouth makes an O shape that he catches in his lips. She cannot help but kiss him, pushing away far too easily the knowledge that there is so much work for them still to do, but she cannot help it. She wants this too much for reason, wants every sensation of his body against hers. She had not known she could want like this, crave like this, give and give like this but it does not feel like giving, not really, when he gives her so much back in return. If she is hollowed out by lust, by wanting, maybe even by love then how can it hurt too much when the space it leaves inside her is filled by everything he pours out into her? She feels him push against her, hooks her leg around his hip, pulling him in, letting him enter her – and so easily they seem to fit together and she cannot get over how right it feels and how frightening. She sees his eyes close in pleasure and nuzzles into his neck, understanding that for him at least lust is easier than love, less complicated at least however much it burns them. It is not the same for her, not when she thinks about it – beneath the floods of sweet sensation, though there is no need to think about it now. It is wonderful just to be able to open herself up enough to feel, to bask in the sensation of pleasure almost – though it has to be the wrong word – platonically. Like a soft blanket in a comfy bed. She wonders if love itself could be like this, just entangled, just breathing, nose to neck, just rocking together without hurry or time or anything outside this clasping warmth, if it could be comfortable and without drama or feelings of pain. She does not want it to end and they stay locked together until an end is unavoidable and her orgasm unwinds like a river in the sunlight, drawing him with her, and oh she thought that was a myth, a story, a fairy tale but here they are together and she is afraid she might cry like the first time but she does not. She reminds herself that she still has his question to answer and when they untangle, stroking and smiling she tenses a little and sends him to make her some tea.

When he comes back she has sat up against the headboard, covers pulled up to her chin and pulled tight. She says thank you and holds the cup in two hands in front of her.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he says, getting back in beside her, and she nods.

“No,” she says “I know,” and he nods, knowing what she is going to say – “I wouldn’t tell you if I did.” A part of him does not want her to go on, a large part of him just wants them to be as they were ten minutes ago forever if they could be, always. He does not want to break this fragile thing they seem to be rebuilding here like a house of cards. He does not even want to breathe in the wrong direction. But he remembers all they have said and knows that to build a house they can live in they have to add this card, however much their fingers shake.

“It was what four months ago? Five?” she says, her fingers rest lightly against her throat.

“Six –” he says, knowing too well, far, far too well how long they went without speaking – “Almost six months.”

“Sure,” she says and thinking about it exhales heavily – “Really, there’s not that much to tell – it was just a client. Things went wrong. One knows the risks –” she shrugs a half shrug – “You just don’t care.” For a moment she almost tells him the truth but he hears it in her voice all the same – _You tell yourself you don’t care_ she says in this version – _It could be worse. It has been worse. Whatever. You have to just say whatever._

“That’s all?” There is no judgement in his tone, she almost wishes there were, it would have been easier that way just to leave it there. She sighs.

“There’s always that guy,” she says “Who just wants to fuck up a Domme. He was one of them; as far as I know his name was Rochefort. He didn’t do anything -” she says quickly, seeing something in his face – “Not like you’re thinking. He meant to. He attacked me but he went for the throat – stupid  really, saved me the trouble – that’s where we keep our alarms.”

“Alarms?”

“We all have alarms wired into our outfits. Don’t ask me. Sophia does it –Princess Louise in Dungeon 8, she’s a technician, has us all rigged up to a panel, we take it in turns to keep the panel - come in on a night we’re not working to look out for the others. Anything happens, we set off the alarm in our collars, he doesn’t hear it in the room but it brings the other girl running. Armand doesn’t know about it.”

“I had no idea –” Athos begins, surprised.

“What? That we would protect ourselves?”

“No. That you were all friends.”

“We’re not,” she shrugs “You think girls have to be friends to look out for each other?” she shrugs again.

“So what happened?”

“He legged it. Obviously. Just cause he’d probably have got away with it doesn’t mean it was legal, you know that.”

“But you never followed it up?”

She stares at him hard enough she does not have to voice her _obviously not_ and he looks down, wanting to kill the man for her, wanting to catch him for justice. When he looks back at her it is because he knows there is more she is not telling him and he does not know if she will or not. She catches his eye for a long moment before deciding not to, though he is right, there is still more to tell. She does not think she _could_ give it all, just as she has not told him everything about Sarazin. She keeps these cards close, too slippery to place onto the castle as yet.

“You know –” he pushes it gently. “I could – do something – if you –”

“Yes,” she nods. “I thought you might say that.”

He looks at her – _and?_

“Later?” she does not know why she is afraid to ask, not yet – “One thing at a time maybe?”

“Of course”.

He says it so gently she looks at him thoughtfully – is he for real now? She wonders. Is he learning? Can it be he is allowing her the time and place to tell him how and when and what she wishes to tell him? She wonders if this is him being someone he more wants to be or allowing her to be who she could be again. Maybe both.

“I should go,” he says. “It’s late.”

She wants to say _must you?_ It is too needy. She does not want him to go either. But he _is!_ It thrills her heart to hear it – he really is just trying to give her time and space. She wonders why. She wonders if she is more afraid to ask him to stay than he is to ask if he might. She was in all earnest when she told him this flat was hers, entirely hers, she had never let anyone in before, never even imagined anyone might stay the night.

In the end it is easy to ask without asking. She orders.

“Don’t,” she says, her words a hand grasping, pulling him back into bed and an echo he never thought to hear from her to him, not a question, not a request, only what she wants and what he has always wanted –

“Stay,” she says.

He stays.

__x__


	16. Chapter 16

 

**16.**

He wonders how and when the others came to invest themselves to this case as wholeheartedly as he has done. Indeed in the last few weeks he suspects more so. In the last few weeks he has been…distracted – and he suspects everyone knows what by.

He never thought he could feel torn about this. About fucking. Because that’s what it is. He supposes he should be able to stop it being so constant, so intense, but when she makes no effort either what can he do but take it? He wants her too much to press the point, even if it does get in the way of things. And it does. Since that first time, he has, without either of them quite admitting it, began to move into her apartment just as she once began to move into his. But it is not the same. It feels – if not so much an invasion but as though she, the leader of an enemy faction has invited him into her territory for a short while to parley and he has ended up staying every time, every night late in her bed saying _I should go_  an meaning it less and less every time. If anything, it becomes harder ever day not to touch her, not to surrender to this lust, but she no longer tries to hide it when she wants it and there is nothing he can do beneath that look in her eyes, however wrong it is to do this, night after night and not talk, not fix anything, not even work on the case anymore – it would be so much more wrong not to give her what she wanted, or to take what he wanted himself.

It is different now; he is not sure for good or bad. He is rough with her in a way he could not have been when she was first his ideal. She is not that now, but something far more real. He thinks. He is ceasing to care about real where she is concerned. This woman – not Milady, nor yet Anne- he does not have to hold back with her, does not have to be gentle, to make sure she feels nothing from him but tenderness and love. It seems she does not even want these things – not only. _Not only, but some, and it’s not just fucking though he silences the voice that says so._ It never could be, though he has had her against every wall, every surface of her place, not sure if they are fighting or using each other or coming together hard enough to fix everything between them with nothing but physical intensity. He has found an animal in himself that has its mate in her and they are two snarling things that cannot be pried apart. If it is not _right_ as such, then he is coming to think there is a difference between what is right and what is honest. Because this, at least, after everything, this giving into lust is honest and true to a feeling they seem to both share even if the words that surround it are not. Because he calls her things now he could have never dreamed at an earlier time, vicious endearments pour from him while he is inside her like a poison that arouses them both – _slut, bitch, cunt_ and finally there it is, _whore._ He meets her eye that time, just for a second, still deep inside her, just to be sure he has not gone too far and she nods just enough to let him not only yes but _yes please_ and the _fuck_ that escapes her in reply is as good as if she had said _yes_ out loud. The more the words spill out the less there is any true meaning to them, this act turning them into endearments almost truly while making the original meaning less true.

Not that he has given up the case for all of this, of course. The office has become over-run with it, the boards full of detail linking the different parts of Sarazin’s operations as they all look for the last clue to his location and a face beyond what they have recreated from description. So it is finally that one day Aramis breaks the silence of a dull afternoon with what begins as just an –

“Ah”.

This from Aramis staring at his computer screen with a face he has carefully been keeping unreadable for days. And then –

“Aha!”

The others look up, Porthos moving over to stand behind him –

“You’ve got something?”

“I’ve got something.”

There is a silence in which the other two watch them expectantly, filled only by the click of keys as Aramis hits buttons. Porthos, less able to control his reactions, looks grim, sickened by what he can see and then even Aramis lets out an unchecked –

“Oh fuck.”

“What?” Athos glares, getting up to join them, wondering what the hell is going on, not missing the way Porthos elbows Aramis and Aramis hastens to close his tab. Standing behind Aramis he sees only first of the videos – the one they knew they were looking for; he nods, swallows hard, not wanting to look –

“It’s – what we’ve been looking for – right? You can track him down from this?”

“We’ve got him,” Aramis nods – “Yeah”.

He stops the video for all of their sakes, none of them knowing whether to feel jubilant or ill.

“What I don’t get,” Porthos says – “Is what kind of prick is not only sick enough to prostitute underage, unwilling girls in the first place, but thick enough to film it and put it out there?”

“One who wants to make money out of anything he can,” Athos nods, looking up at the other two- who are looking at each other in a way Athos has come to recognise as the _You tell him -  no You tell him_ look – “Alright guys, what is it?”

Aramis takes a deep breath.

“It’s not just Celine,” he says finally.

“No,” Athos frowns. “We didn’t think it would – oh,” he stops suddenly, face growing white “Excuse me”.

Porthos and Aramis look at each other in the wake of Athos’ sudden silent departure from the room and nod, sighing. They repeat this process a minute later at the sounds of muffled crashing down the corridor. Ten minutes later Athos returns, thin lipped, with the look of a man who is holding himself in only via his uniform.

“Your _source,_ Aramis?” he raises an eyebrow. Aramis sighs. “You said you were tipped off to the existence of these videos?”

Aramis tries not to look at the tab minimised in the corner of the screen, looking all the more guilty for it.

“Yeah,” he says quietly

“I’ve got it,” Porthos announces, using Aramis’s computer at the same time – “Address, photos, the full works.”

Athos nods tensely.

“Athos, don’t get mad at her,” Aramis says quietly – “I wouldn’t have been able to come to you with this either. She told me not to tell you, I think it’s fairly obvious why.”

Athos sighs, infinitely heavy, weary –

“I’m not mad with her,” he says so quietly only Aramis can hear and for the first time since he has known her he realises, as he is saying it, that it is true – “How could I be?” Aramis nods, relieved.

“You guys bring this fucker in,” Athos says – “I’m going home – d’Artagnan, put a note into maintenance, will you, about that wall in the gents.”

“What’s wrong with the wall in the –” d’Artagnan stops at a warning glare from the others.

“Make up any reason you like.” Athos pulls his coat on and slips out.  

 

 

Athos stands outside her door, trying to wait until he can stop sweating, make his hands stop tingling, afraid she might be out, afraid she might be in. He stands there staring at the door until a voice comes behind him –

“You gonna stand there all day?”

He is reminded forcefully of that first date, of falling in love with Anne for the second time. He cannot, as he thinks, keep count of the times. Was it every time he saw her? Every time he thought of her? He had fallen in love with Milady so hard every Friday it had been painful and new every time. Was it every time she spoke – Anne or Milady? Whoever she was, at whatever time, whatever her mood, however different she was from to day to day, he had fallen in love with them all, every difference, every attitude, every character she played and style she took on. He can no longer believe he agonised so much over who she really was, convinced she could only be one person, really. Who was, after all? It occurs to him that he has not had a drink all day, and does not want one.

“I –” he stammers. He remembers this too, stammering in a corridor full of flowers – “I didn’t know if you were in – I wanted to give you –” he pulls it out of his inside pocket, tattered almost down to a scrap.

“What the bloody hell is that.”

“I kept it. That day, when I helped you pick up the flowers right here. Well, you gave it to me – I suppose you don’t need it back, really. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

She looks down at the scrap in his hand and back at him, not sure if she wants to laugh or cry; remembering, touching the scrap with a finger -so lightly, her tenderness finally easing the tingling in his palms. She sighs, fumbling the key in the lock – he remembers this too, remembers helping her, squeezing himself into her life, desperate to be anything to her he could be.

“Come in, Athos, before you hurt yourself.”

He follows.

“Now, what’s the matter?”

“We caught Sarazin. The boys are off to pick him up now.”

“Why aren’t you with them?”

“This is more important.”

“What’s _this?”_

“We caught him by the videos.”

“Ah”. She dumps her bag, makes tea, makes him tea in silence, sits down on the sofa, motions him to sit beside her, he moves as if in a play, so much more real than life.

“I know -” she says finally “I didn’t tell you.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” she blows on her tea – “Did you watch them?”

“No.”

She nods neutrally, internally unsure if she is relieved or thinks him a coward; they are both silent for a moment.

“I didn’t expect this,” she says – I thought you’d be furious.”

“I am. But not with you. You thought I’d be angry with _you?_ Really?” It hurts that she thought this of him. She stays silent until he voices this hurt out loud.

“When I left,” she looks into her tea, voice quiet, shivering with old anger – “You _paid me_ for being with you. You dare talk to me of what I might expect of you?”

“It was wrong of me,” he says. “Unspeakably wrong. I don’t ask that you forgive me. But – do you really think so little of me that I would blame you for – for –” he trembles, eyes brimming.

“I didn’t know,” she says – “You blamed me for everything else.”

He sighs, knowing she is right.

“It seems we’ve both underestimated each other,” she says – “So now what?”

“There’s so much to say,” Athos speaks slowly – “So much to make up to you and I’m not good with – words. But I love you Anne, I love you Milady, whoever you are I love you and I just want to know – will you let me try? Can we start from now?”

“We can’t ignore the past,” she sighs – “We can’t just _start again”_ Athos feels his eyes grow wet, feels himself about to collapse beneath her inevitable refusal – “We came together so fast,” she says – “We fell apart _so fast_ and so hard. I don’t know – I just know that when we were we were wonderful, what couple in a century have that chance? Who knows us now like we know each other? For good or bad I don’t think we can throw that chance away. I don’t know if we can be together but I think – I _do_ know we can’t not be – for what it’s worth? I think –” her eyes are shiny with tears when she looks up at him and she sounds lost, ashamed, almost terrified –

“I think I _need_ you. Is that bad?”

“If it is, we’re both as guilty,” he says quietly, brushing the tear from her face in a gesture he cannot hold back. For a moment he almost kisses her but stops himself; words right now are more important and, even though it is apropos of nothing she has said he says it anyway –

“I don’t want to stop you working.”

“What?” she blinks.

“I hated your job,” he adds. She looks at him curiously – “I still hate it. But it’s yours. I don’t have the right to stop you and I never had the right to be an ass about it and I’ll talk about it – if you want to. It’s up to you.”

“You’re actually telling me –” she finds herself the slow one this time – “You could get over it, you could stop it coming between us?”

“I could try. For you.”

She swallows hard.

“I quit,” she says. It is his turn to blink at her.

“What?”

“I quit.”

“I don’t want – no you don’t have to – not for me”.

She snorts.

“Like I’d do it for you. I quit weeks ago, Athos.”

“Why – but what? – you didn’t tell me!”

“No. It was my choice; it didn’t have anything to do with you. And –” she looks guilty.

“And I suppose I was waiting for you to say what you just said. I’m _sorry –”_ she rolls her eyes at him, at herself – “You get into the habit of mistrusting people so hard, you test them without meaning to. I am sorry, it was dickish of me. I can’t say I won’t do it again, but I’ll try. Okay?”

He can hardly reply for grinning from ear to ear, looking at her in happiness and wonder.

“Okay!”

“I’m yours Athos,” she puts her hands into his. “If you want me to be.”

“I want –” he looks at her, heart full – “I want you to be yours, like I am. Yours.”

“You think we can’t both do both?”

“I think we can give it a try.”

“I think you should be kissing me right now, don’t you?”

“I think that.”

And her smile meets his smile.

__x__

**Oh my god! So this snuck up on me without my knowing it was gonna – but this is actually the last real chapter! There is gonna be an epilogue though cause I got a couple more things ot get in but I can’t believe the main thing is suddenly over!! :-P Thanks to everyone’s who’s stuck with this, your comments give me life!**


	17. Chapter 17

**Epilogue**

“…On your knees for me,” he hears the second he walks through the door; late in from work, shopping bag in hand. He grins and holds up a hand in greeting and her face lights up in that way he will never get used to if he lives like this a hundred years and she waves lightly back, holding the phone between her ear and shoulder. _Love you_ he mouths silently and she mirrors him back before speaking again.

“Well yes of course, completely naked except for the boots”.

Athos dares to catch her eye and raises an eyebrow at her, sprawled ungainly across the sofa in her pyjamas, blanket pulled up to her chin. She sees his eyebrow and gives him the finger in amicable return. He grins and goes into the kitchen, dumping the bags down and half listening to her as he unpacks, as she paints a man a picture of herself draped elegantly in satin sheets with a glass of champagne in one hand- at which point he comes half way out of the kitchen, enough to ask her silently if she wants a cup of tea- she grins and gives him a thumbs up. By the time he returns with it she is just hanging up.

“Satisfied customer?” he raises an eyebrow, moving her feet so he can sit down. Her feet object to this and end up back in his lap as she stretches –

“Always. I’m good.”

“I can hear that. With the boots, and the champagne and all.”

She wiggles her toes in his lap, raises her mug of tea.

“Oh shut up.”

“Are you done for the day?”

“Yeah.”

“So?”

“So what?”

She looks back at him smiling, teasing him with her pretence at not understanding.

“Results day. How’d you do?”

“Oh that. You want the good news or the bad news?”

“Oh god.”

“Well the good news is I aced it,” she grins “Yes you are looking at someone with a first degree in Floristry and Anthropology.”

He looks at her for a second and then breaks out into a huge smile –

“Really!”

She nods and lets out the squeal she has been holding in as she throws her arms around her neck with only minor tea spilling and a great deal of awkwardness of limb.

“But that’s fantastic! So what’s the bad news?”

“Well the bad news is I got a first degree in Floristry and anthropology – like what do I even do with that? And if you say be a florist I _will_ smack you.”

“Anthropology’s not so bad, is it? You could, I dunno – go into law, or psych – hell you could come join me on the force in time.”

“Me? One of the pigs?” she laughs. “Imagine that.”

She smiles for a moment, blows on her tea –

“No really, imagine that. Cause I’m having trouble – _me –_ on the right side of the law. It’s – it’s not such a bad idea.”

She smiles and nods, mostly to herself –

“So what about you? Good day? Bring in the bad guys?”

“Always and – oh yes – the club is now completely closed down.”

She raises an eyebrow and cannot help but smile.

“Because of me? Oh you are sweet – well because of Rochefort anyway.”

“Actually not really, though his conviction certainly helped. No, turns out your erstwhile boss was pulling a lot of strings to keep business within the law as I _maaay_ have suggested to Aramis the very first day we were there.”

“Oh dear” she grins – “Poor Aramis. You’re not giving him an easy time are you?”

“I may be a little righteously smug, I confess it.”

“I pity them all. But I’m glad you won out. I always wondered about the legality of it all.”

“There are dungeons that operate fine – but for an owner to allow a man like that in – I knew there’d be more we could have them for.”

She nods, shifts on the sofa so as to snuggle up against him, head on his chest.

“You could find one, you know,” he says “If you wanted.”

“What? A new dungeon? No I think my days going out the house to work are done – this phone line thing’s working out much more comfortably. I’ll take the pay cut to not have to leave the house. Did you hear me there?”

“I did,” he kisses the top of her head. “I rather liked it – nothing but the boots you say?”

“Oh shut up Athos. Later,” she grins – “I’ll let you listen in some time _if_ you think you can behave.”

He looks at her, loves her, smiles blissfully; there is only one thing he can say to a question like that –

“Yes, Milady.”

__x__

 

**And that is the actual end, thank you all! I’d say watch out for my next AU but it’s gonna be extremely weird and I’m expecting an interest of maybe two people and a medium potato, still, this one’s been a fine ride!** **J**


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